By Cynthia Chin
East High School
Come together for calculators
The 18th Annual Pi Mile will take place at Warner Park Saturday, May 27, with registration at 9 am and the run/walk at 10 am. Join the East High School (EHS) math community for a nice walk or run and get a t-shirt and pie. Proceeds pay for maintenance of the calculator rental program. East math students will be bringing home more information about registration soon. Math club advisors are accepting donated prizes for the end-of-race drawing. Contact Josh Jawitz-McClellan (jmcclellan@madison.k12.wi.us) or TJ Clegg (tjclegg@madison.k12.wi.us). Note: Donations of used calculators are welcome. Special thanks to the Berrey household for contributing two alumni calculators rescued on moving day.
Talk to each other about money
April 22‒29 is Money Smart Week. Visit www.moneysmartweek.org to learn more. Take time to learn about personal finance or share something new and age-appropriate with the students in your family. EHS offers semester courses in personal finance and independent living; and math students at all levels study savings, loans and interest rates in their courses. Advanced Algebra with Financial Applications is available as a third-year math option. Note: One semester of financial literacy will become a graduation requirement for Madison students of the class of 2021 (current eighth-graders).
Pennies add up to clean water for thousands
Thank you to the EHS math and science students who raised over $1,600 in the Engineering Club’s annual February penny drive. Half the money raised will go to the UW-Madison Chapter of Engineers without Borders to support locally-maintained infrastructure projects in developing countries. The UW Chapter’s latest project involves purification of water for the 4,000-member community of Lweza, Uganda. More information about the work of UW-EWB can be found at www.ewbuw.org. The other half of the money raised will support EHS students to attend LEEP Day (Latino/as Exploring Engineering Professions) and conduct outreach events with future Purgolders at Black Hawk, Sherman and O’Keeffe Middle Schools.
Math Week May 15‒19
We are seeking guest speakers from the community to talk about how mathematics is used throughout the Madison area. Artistic, social and political applications are of interest, as well as technical and business uses. Our theme is “STEAM and Service.” While by no means required, speakers are encouraged to highlight public service aspects of their work. We are hoping to host a separate community service fair for students during or close to the same week. Contact Cynthia Chin (cchin@madison.k12.wi.us or 204-1603 ext. 41534) if you have suggestions for presentations or would personally like to be involved.
Congratulations to the EHS Mathematical Modeling Teams who were awarded two honorable mentions among their five November 2016 competition entries. Some EHS students wrote papers about site locations for warehouses of a major online retailer, taking into consideration time, distance and cost of delivery, plus state-by-state variations in sales tax and other regulations. Other teams developed wave-release models for triathlon contestants to minimize participant congestion and road closures in the host city. Find more information about the HiMCM and the IM2C competitions at www.comap.com.
This spring the Engineering Club has a “traveling show” on sensors, driverless cars and robots that is playing for students from O’Keeffe, Sherman, Hawthorne, Lakeview, Mendota and Emerson schools.