Themes for 2022-23 Competition
Your poster must cover a topic in one of the three themes listed below. For each of these themes, your goal should not be to explain your chosen subject as deeply and technically as possible but to offer an engaging enough perspective that a reader can walk away with a greater sense of understanding and interest in your chosen topic.
You may also discover some crossover in these themes as you create your poster (e.g. perhaps to motivate interest in a mathematical concept you have learned outside of class, you would like to talk about its history, or other applications outside of mathematics). That's fine - you won't be graded on your poster's thematic purity, these themes are mainly meant to help you get the ball rolling on mathematically interesting topics.
Theme 1: Extra-ordinary mathematics: Present a mathematical concept that you've taken the time to learn outside of class.
First-year university mathematics topics can be an accessible approach to tackling this theme, such as eigenvalues and eigenvectors, modulo arithmetic, complex numbers, integrals, etc. More complex topics can also be approached from an expository angle - you don't have to solve a millennium problem to explain it and show that it's interesting!
Theme 2: Crossing over mathematics: Present an application of mathematics that bridges mathematics with other disciplines.
Examples may include art that can be made with mathematics, or mathematical modeling in non-mathematical fields (e.g. biology, economics, computer science, etc.). Explain the significance of the mathematical practices used in these applications.
Theme 3: Mathematical history: Present an interesting story about the development of mathematics and explain why it is relevant to understanding contemporary mathematics.
This could be about a specific mathematician, a significant (solved or unsolved) problem in mathematics, the development of a field/mathematical practice, or any other interesting component of the history of mathematics.
