Done for the summer

The ISU Math REU is over, for me. I'm still in Ames for a couple days, but all my work is done.

Yesterday, Sean and I presented our project via slideshow to the rest of the group. Dad was able to make it up to Ames to see it, as well, which was great. The presentation went very well: as we planned, the talk was very accessable to all (Dad, who got his bachelor's degree in math but thereafter left the field in favor of music, said that he understood 90% of it!) Among the Math REU presentations I've seen so far, ours was easily the most simple, cohesive, and easy to understand--a product of our topic being the most clearly-defined and well-directed since the first week of the program. It was also exciting to show off our new results--most of the groups did not even get a chance to work on new directions, because their topics were more complex or their mentors were less knowledgeable in the subject.

So, I'm headed for home on Friday. However, before I get settled for a few weeks of uneventful Grinnell life, I'm taking a little trip: from Saturday until Wednesday I'll be in Philadelphia visiting Claire, where she's been for the summer, studying oboe with a member of the Philadelpia Symphony Orchestra. We'll also probably take a day trip into New York City. I'm excited, because I've never been to either of those cities, and it'll be fun to explore them with my sister.

Once I get back from my little East Coast trip, I'll have two weeks at home before I head out to Lake Tahoe to hang out with the CMS XC team for a week, and then it'll be time to start school again. I'm already fearful that those two weeks at home will seem really long, because right now I'm extremely anxious to get back to California. I'm hoping to spend those couple weeks running and lifting a lot, and (cross fingers) reading some books rather than getting re-addicted to computer games. Also, I'm looking forward to some Grinnell Ultimate Frisbee games.


The pictures below depict some of the things I've been up to lately…nothing that notable, but nothing that taxing. Potluck, afternoon at the lake, disk golf (a recent fad here--I played 6/7 days last week), and wrapping up the math research for the summer. I've also been watching some DVDs that I got out of the ISU library: my favorites have been Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal," Charlie Chaplin's "The Great Dictator," Sofia Coppolla's "Lost in Translation," and Kubrick's "Paths of Glory." So yeah…tough summer.




Math nerds play a shirtless game of disk golf on the afternoon of the hottest day of the summer. This is at the City of Ames disk golf course…there's also an ISU one (both are 18 holes) just across the street from our apartments.


Sporting the new ISU Math REU t-shirt.


The group outside Carver Hall - silly?


The group outside Carver Hall - uh…cute?


Night walk on the bike path near Fredricksen Court.


Afternoon at Big Creek Lake


Grillin'


Hogben survivors: Sean, Holley, me, Max. All slaves of the illustrious Leslie Hogben.


Chenette-Droms-Hogben-Mikkelsen-Pryporova, the authors of "Minimum Rank of a Graph over Arbitrary Fields," just submitted for review/publication in the Electronic Journal of Linear Algebra. From left: Olga and Rana (ISU grad students), Sean (my undergrad partner from University of Mary Washington), Leslie (ISU faculty mentor), me.


The sweet LaTeX slideshow.