By Cynthia Chin
East High School
Come together for calculators
The 19th Annual Pi Mile will take place at Warner Park Saturday, May 26, with registration at 9 am and the run/walk at 10 am. Join the East math community for a nice walk or run, and get a t-shirt plus pie. Proceeds pay for maintenance of the calculator rental program — replacement batteries as well as calculators (Note: Donations of used calculators are welcome anytime.). East math students will bring home more information about registration soon. Math club advisors are now accepting donated prizes for the end-of-race drawing. Contact Phillip Galarowicz (pgalarowicz@madison.k12.wi.us) or Karen Paschke (kpaschke@madison.k12.wi.us).
Talk to each other about money
April 21‒28 is Money Smart Week. Take time to learn more about personal finance or to share something new and age-appropriate with the students in your family (moneysmartweek.org/kids). East 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 also available as a third-year math option. Note: one semester of Financial Literacy is scheduled to become a graduation requirement for students in the Class of 2021.
Pennies add up to clean water for thousands
Thank you to all the East math and science students who raised hundreds of dollars 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 ongoing projects include clean water for the communities of Lweza, Uganda; Tabuga, Ecuador and Rio Lindo, Guatemala. Learn more about UW-EWB at ewbuw.org. The other half of the money raised will support East students to attend LEEP Day (Latins Exploring Engineering Professions) and to conduct outreach events with future Purgolders at area middle and elementary schools.
STEAM Week May 21‒28
We are seeking guest speakers from the community to talk about how mathematics, science, technology and engineering are used throughout the Madison area. Artistic, social and political applications of mathematics are of interest, as well as technical and business uses. The “A” in STEAM represents our collaboration with the East Fine Arts Department this year. Contact Cynthia Chin (cchin@madison.k12.wi.us or 204-1603 x 41534) if you have suggestions for STEM presentations or would like to be involved.
Math Modeling Teams
Congratulations to the East Mathematical Modeling Teams, who were awarded two honorable mentions among their six November 2017 competition entries. The two highest-ranking teams were among only 90 out of 938 teams invited to compete internationally in the spring semester competition. Although it does not appear at press time that we will be following up on that particular opportunity, we had a team enter the MathWorks Math Modelling Challenge March 2‒3.
Engineering Club
The club joined with Women in STEM and Sisterhood to host a Family Engineering Night Feb. 22. We were visited by many young engineers from Emerson, Mendota, Lowell, Schenk, Black Hawk, Sherman and Hawthorne schools for an evening of activities and project demonstrations. High school students enjoyed a panel discussion with UW-Madison students representing many different engineering majors and student organizations. Thank you to all the families who supported this event and to the school theater staff who assisted with a public showing of the film “Dream Big: Engineering Our World.”