DECATUR – Two Millikin University Mathematics students recently presented their work at the Joint Mathematics Meetings, a national conference for mathematicians, held in Boston, Mass.
Senior Mathematics students Brian Freeman and Jayme Reed presented their work titled “Using Python to Play the Game of Cycles on Trees” at an Undergraduate Poster Session sponsored by Pi Mu Epsilon, the national mathematics honors society. The poster was also the joint work of Millikin senior Mathematics student Bushra Ibrahim.
“Brian, Jayme, and Bushra have been working on “The Game of Cycles” since August 2022. This game involves two players and a mathematical object called a graph. In this research, we consider which player has the winning strategy for certain types of game boards,” Math & Computational Sciences Assistant Professor Dr. Emily Olson said. “The poster that Brian and Jayme made includes a summary of the game and our results on a type of graph called a tree. Their poster was well-attended at the conference; they explained their research results to interested attendees non-stop for 90 minutes. They should be very proud of their research in such an abstract area as mathematics.”
The research project was made possible by a grant from the Center of Undergraduate Research in Mathematics (CURM). CURM is funded by the National Science Foundation DMS awards 0636648, 1148695, and 1722563.
The Joint Mathematics Meetings are considered the largest mathematics gathering in the world.
“The conference brings together about 3,000 mathematicians every January and is one of the largest math conferences in the United States,” Olson said. “There are many types of math presentations, given by undergraduate and graduate students, professors, research academics, and industry professionals.”
