Welcome to Somerville Mathematics

Welcome to Somerville Mathematics, a blog devoted to exciting mathematical things happening in Somerville MA. I am the founder of The Somerville Mathematics Fund, www.Somervillemathematicsfund.org
The Math Fund was chartered to celebrate and encourage mathematics achievement in Somerville. I hope you will check out my TEDxSomerville talk on the Somerville Math Fund,
I find that there are many other interesting things happening mathematically in Somerville and I hope on this blog to have others share what they are doing. So please contact me at mathfund@gmail.com if you would like to contribute an article.
Erica

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Time for Somerville Teachers to Get Together Their Grant Applications


Every year the Somerville Mathematics Fund offers teacher grants for K-12 teachers in Somerville who have interesting and exciting ideas to support math learning and enrichment for their students.  The grant application is on the Somerville Mathematics Fund website and is due by January 13, 2014.

The maximum amount of any grant is $500 per year.  Previous winners are welcome to apply again as long as they have completed their report on the previous grant.  You can read about last year’s grant winners on the Somerville Mathematics Blog or by requesting a copy of this year’s annual newsletter to be mailed in early December.

The Somerville Mathematics Fund, an affiliate of the national scholarship organization Dollars for Scholars, was chartered in 2000 to celebrate and encourage achievement in mathematics in the city of Somerville, Massachusetts.  Over thirteen years, the math fund has awarded $57,648 in teacher grants in the city of Somerville.

In early April, the fund will be seeking applications from students who reside in Somerville for college mathematics scholarships.  The application will be available on 
http://somervillemath.dollarsforscholars.org and www.somervillemathematicsfund.org.  For more information, to volunteer or to make a tax-deductible contribution, please contact Erica (617-666-0666 or mathfund@gmail.com)

©2013 Erica Dakin Voolich

Saturday, October 26, 2013

9th Annual Scrapheap Showdown-- So Many Marbles, So little Time!



On October 20, 9 teams of 3 high school students each from Somerville gathered in Gantcher Gym at Tufts University to compete in the ninth annual Scrapheap Showdown.  Along with the usual interesting “junk” in the center of the room when the students walked in, there were many pieces of paper, some foam core, lots of string and tape.  


The students were given their challenge: to design and build a Marble maze which would go between the far corners of two side-by-side banquet tables at a rigidly held distance of two feet apart. The challenge was a cross between a marble maze and a Rube Goldberg machine.  


The point system gave credit for creativity of designing obstacles and tricks for their marbles’ pathways.  The teams worked intensely, building, testing and adjusting their mazes.  


While everyone was working, the President of Tufts University, Dr.Monaco, stopped by and visited with every team and spoke to each of the contestants about their designs for the projects and their educational plans.



After 3 and 3/4 hours, the competition was held.  Each team had three times to have a marble run through their maze/Rube Goldberg machine.



Each of the nine mazes was interesting and sported differences in design.  We saw marbles that jumped the tables on what looked like ski runs or shot out a track and were caught on the other table, went through loop-the-loops, flew through a hoop, zig-zagged back and forth, rode a “cup” elevator up or down, or triggered a mechanism that dropped down, raised up or in some way set off another marble.    Some rang bells or started another marble continuing down the track.  The students' mazes competed against each other.

The team with the highest overall score, was “Back to Basics” (Elliot Rippe, Arjun Singh, Daniel Portillo).  


Second place was the “Swerve” (Caterina MacDonald, Melissa Baptista, Rachel Berry).  


Third place was “Mr. Scrima” (Anthony Scrima, R J Bingham, John Mulcahey).  


Fourth place was “Junk Punks” (Kelly Cachimuel, Ben Stevens).

The other teams that competed were "BKL," "It's About the Journey,"  "Celo,"  "The B-Team," and "MC^2"

The teams could choose their prize in the order they finished.    The prizes donated were: three $100 gift cards (donated by Monica Fernandes, Zbigniew Nitecki, Adam Foster & Susan Weiss), four Red Sox tickets (donated by Sam Voolich), three $50 RedBones BBQ gift cards, four passes Museum of Fine Arts and four passes to the Children’s Museum (donated by PriceWaterHouse).  
This event was for both fundraising and an intellectual challenge--all funds raised go towards a Somerville Mathematics Fund scholarship for an outstanding Somerville mathematics student.  Fundraiser Ben Stevens won a Newbury Comics gift card donated by the Saraf Nawar.  All competitors and volunteers went home with Scrapheap Showdown tee-shirts donated by Gerald and Debra Bickoff.  

Designers & refiners of the challenge were: Chase Duclos-Orsello, Adam Foster, Monica Fernandes, Richard Graf, Jay Landers, Saraf Nawar, Zbigniew Nitecki, Erica Voolich, Michael Voolich, Susan Weiss.  DSG Communications donated the paper.  Cathy Cannan and Michael Morgan, teachers at Somerville High School, recruited student teams.  Michael Voolich designed the T-shirts.  

Sponsors of the event included Winter Hill Bank, RedBones BBQ , CliftonLarsonAllen LLP, the Bickoff family, Jay & Jasper, and our wonderful host, Tufts University.  Various members of the Board worked on all aspects of organizing the event and worked to make it a success along with community volunteers. 

The Somerville Times and The Somerville Journal covered the event both online and in their published versions.

The Somerville Mathematics Fund is an affiliate of Dollars for Scholars.  They were chartered in 2000 to celebrate and encourage mathematics achievement in Somerville.  In January, they will be looking for teacher grant applications; and in April, they will be looking for scholarship applications.   For more information or to volunteer or to make a donation, call 617-666-0666, e-mail mathfund@gmail.com, or go to www.somervillemathematicsfund.org.


©2013 Erica Dakin Voolich


Thursday, September 26, 2013

Scrapheap Showdown Coming! Time to Sign Up

The Somerville Mathematics Fund offers it's annual high school engineering challenge in October.
The deadline to register is October 10.  The competition is on October 20th in "The Cage" at Tufts University.  To download the registration form, go to Somervillemathematicsfund.org.

Competitors must be high school students who are residents of Somerville MA to participate.  Students choose their 3-person team in advance, arrive on the day of the competition, ready to learn what their challenge is and to compete for wonderful prizes.  Prior to the event, students must register by October 10 and to fund raise to support their team.  There is a minimum $75 total per/team to raise and the best single fundraiser wins a prize.

If you have questions, e-mail: mathfund@gmail.com

The Somerville Mathematics Fund is an affiliate of Dollars for Scholars established in 2000 to celebrate and encourage mathematics achievement in Somerville MA.  We will be looking for teacher grant applications in January and college scholarship applications in April.

The Somerville Mathematics Fund is an all-volunteer organization, which runs on donations and folks donating their time.  For information check out our website.  Then feel free to volunteer or to donate.

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Outstanding High School Students win Math College Scholarships

Erica Voolich (right) congratulates Somerville High School students Hae-Young C Joo, Emily Mei and Nickolas Menezes on their winning Somerville Mathematics Fund Scholarships.



The Somerville Mathematics Fund is pleased to announced that they have awarded five scholarships this year, thanks to the generosity of their wonderful donors.  The winners are such a delightful group of students who accomplished much while in high school are all planning on taking mathematics or mathematics-using courses in college.  

This year’s winners and their colleges are:  Hae-Young C. Joo will attend U Mass Lowell, Emily Mei will attend U Mass Amherst, Nickolas Menezes will attend Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Rishab Sharma will attend Northeastern University, and Djinnie Timoleon will attend Hamilton College.

The all-volunteer Somerville Mathematics Fund is an affiliate of Dollars for Scholars.  They offer renewable mathematics scholarships of $1,000 a year.   

Three of the students received named scholarships.  Emily Mei received the Salvatore and Maria Pizzi Memorial Scholarship.  To read about the Pizzi couple whose family generously donated this scholarship go to  http://pizzifoundation.com.p9.hostingprod.com/

Erica Voolich (right) congratulates Emily Mei on winning 
the Salvatore and Maria Pizzi Scholarship.


Rishab Sharma received the Charlotte and Dr. Irving Fradkin Scholarship.  You can read the story of Dr. Fradkin’s (and his wife Charlotte who worked behind the scenes to help make his dream possible) at http://scholarshipamerica.org/news_items/fradkin_history.php
Dr. Fradkin was the founder of Dollars for Scholars over 50 years ago and just this April retired from Scholarship America, the parent organization.

Djinnie Timoleon received the Alice Schafer Memorial Scholarship.  You can read the story of Alice Shafer at http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Obits2/Schafer_Boston.html
Alice Schafer overcame challenges in her own life to become a mathematician and a founder of the Association for Women in Mathematics in 1971 and was their second President.  She was a founding member of the Somerville Mathematics Fund board in 2000.

Erica Voolich (right) congratulates Djinnie Timoleon from Prospect Hill Academy on winning the Alice Schafer Memorial Scholarship.


The Somerville Mathematics Fund, an affiliate of the national scholarship organization Dollars for Scholars, was chartered in 2000 to celebrate and encourage achievement in mathematics in the city of Somerville, Massachusetts. It May 2011, it was recognized as the outstanding Dollars for Scholars Chapter in New England.  Since it's founding, it has awarded $204,000 in mathematics scholarships to outstanding Somerville students.  Next fall, The Somerville Mathematics Fund will be seeking applications from teachers who teach in the city of Somerville who would like funding for classroom mathematics activities.  In October, the Math Fund will also be seeking high school students to compete in the ninth annual Scrapheap Showdown.  For more  information, to volunteer, or to make a tax-deductible contribution, please contact Erica Voolich (617-666-0666 or mathfund@gmail.com) or go to www.somervillemathematicsfund.org.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Starting with Pizza, Ending with Pie and Celebrating Pi in the Middle!


Take a bunch of middle school kids, their teachers, parents and some volunteers add a good bit of math, some food, and what do you get?  A π Night Celebration!


On Thursday night, 3.14, over three hundred students, parents, teachers, and volunteers celebrated π  by eating pizza for dinner, then spending an evening estimating, creating, collecting data, answering questions, and ended with pies for everyone and π pencils for the students.  

After enjoying pizza donated by the Bickoff family, the students from Kennedy, Healey, West Somerville and Argenziano schools went around to a wide variety of math activities set up in the gym and cafeteria.  These activities included: bicycle wheel roll, guessing contest, tooth pick drop (Buffon Needle problem), drawing a circle the size of a CD, mystery boxes, π button design, π facts quiz, birthday in π, circle in square vs square in circle, drawing cardiod or nephroid, drawing concentric circles by folding, drawing circles by tangents, drawing circle by right angles, reciting digits of π, predicting how high of a pour, predicting circumferences and radii, graphing circumference vs diameter.

The event was planned by Wil Jacques (Healey), Ellen McPherson (West Somerville Neighborhood School), Jack O’Keefe (all middle schools), Kaitlin Souza (Kennedy), Erica Voolich (Somerville Mathematics Fund) and Scott Weaver (West Somerville Neighborhood School).  Table Talk Pies of Worcester generously supplied small pies for all who came that night and large pies for winners of events.  Table Talk has generously supported this Somerville Math Fund event for ten years.  Star Market/Shaws (Beacon Street) generously donated most of the juice.

The wonderful volunteers from Somerville High School, the Kennedy School PTA, the community and teachers from Kennedy, West Somerville Neighborhood School, Healey School and Argenziano School helped to make the evening possible.


This Pi Night celebration was sponsored by Somerville Mathematics Fund, an affiliate of the national scholarship organization Dollars for Scholars.  They were founded in 2000 with the mission to celebrate and encourage mathematics achievement in Somerville MA.  In April they will be looking for applications for college mathematics scholarships.  For more information, www.somervillemathematicsfund.org or mathfund@gmail.com.















© 2013 Somerville Mathematics Fund, Erica Dakin Voolich
The link to this post is http://somervillemathematics.blogspot.com/2013/03/starting-with-pizza-ending-with-pie-and.html

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

The Somerville Mathematics Fund Announces Winning Teacher Grants


The Somerville Mathematics Fund, an affiliate of Dollars for Scholars, is pleased to announce the winners of its 2013 Teacher Grants to encourage mathematics achievement in the classrooms in Somerville.  Again, the members of the board were pleased with the quality of the applications this year and with the exciting mathematical things that are happening in the Somerville classrooms.  Through the generosity of John Bullock and Akamai, The Somerville Mathematics Fund was able fund a record number of wonderful projects this year.  

The Math Fund wants to thank John Bullock for generously underwriting the following teacher grants: 

π - Annette Fiore Bassett at Winter Hill Community School for “K-2 & 3-5 Family Mathematics Nights"
π - Sally Brith at Next Wave for “Pre-Algebra Curriculum Materials” 
π - Rebeca Byard at Brown School (K) for “One Hundredth Day Celebration”
π - Jayne Campos at Argenziano School (1st, SEIP) for “Math Center Materials”
π - Frances Carino at Winter Hill Community Innovation School (4th) for “IXL Software”
π - Diane Cline at El Sestima at East Somerville Community School for “Multiplication Rock”
π - Donna Driscoll at Argenziano School for “K-5 Family Mathematics Nights”
π - Susan Fothergill & Erin McGovern at Argenziano School (3rd) for “Math Games”
π - Debra Hurley at Kennedy School (2nd) for “Mathematics Materials”
π - Emma Mrozicki at Unidos, East Somerville Community School (4th) for “Mathematics Materials”
π - Patricia Murphy-Sheehy at Somerville High School for “Problem of the Week”
π - Charlene O’Neill at Winter Hill Community Innovation School (4th) for “IXL Software” 
π - Monica Campbell Revert at Unidos, East Somerville Community School (6th) for “Mathematics Materials”
π - Sarah Rice at East Somerville Community School (1st, SEIP) for “Game Night”
π - Carmina Scuccimarra at Kennedy School (3rd) for “EquaBeams”
π - Kathryn Sousa at Argenziano School (1st, SEIP) for “Mathematics Materials”
π - Alison Walton at Healey School for “Mathematics Materials”
π - Linda Wiegenfeld at East Somerville Community School for “2 – 4 Family Mathematics Night”

The Math Fund wants to thank Akamai for generously underwriting the following teacher grant:
π - Celia Taylor at Healey School for “K-2 Family Mathematics Night”


The Somerville Mathematics Fund, an affiliate of the national scholarship organization Dollars for Scholars, was chartered in 2000 to celebrate and encourage achievement in mathematics in the city of Somerville, Massachusetts.  Over thirteen years, the math fund has awarded $57,648 in teacher grants in the city of Somerville.

In early April, the fund will be seeking applications from students who reside in Somerville for college mathematics scholarships.  Copies of the scholarship application form is available at  www.somervillemathematicsfund.org   For more information, to volunteer or to make a tax-deductible contribution, please contact Erica Voolich (666-0666 or mathfund@gmail.com).

©2013 Erica Dakin Voolich
The link for this page is http://somervillemathematics.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-somerville-mathematics-fund.html














Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Teacher Grant Applications Due

Each year The Somerville Mathematics Fund awards grants for teachers in Somerville MA who have great ideas for math activities in their classroom, for after school activities, or at a family math night.  The grants are for materials and are for up to $500 each.  Teachers who have won before are eligible to apply again as long as they have completed the follow-up paperwork for their previous grant.

The deadline is coming soon, 14 January 2013.  So, I you have a great idea but don't have the money for materials in your classroom, go to our website and download the application.