Teen Mathletes Battle at Fun Field Day

Westmont’s 36th annual Mathematics Field Day features about 100 students from eight regional high schools in a friendly competition Saturday, Feb. 8, at 1 pm in Winter Hall. 

The event includes college bowls with buzzers, written exams and Chalk Talks with student presentations. This year the Chalk Talk, a 10-12-minute presentation, is about base systems, the numbers of different digits or combinations of digits and letters that systems of counting use to represent numbers.

The event, directed by Westmont mathematics professor Anna Aboud, features mathletes from Santa Barbara, San Marcos, Dos Pueblos, Carpinteria and Hemet high schools, as well as Cate School, Oaks Christian School and Pacifica Christian Academy.

Alumnus Manny Reyes (‘05), who earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and physics at Westmont and a doctorate in mathematics at UC Berkeley, will speak at the awards banquet at 5:30 pm in the Global Leadership Center. He taught at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, for several years before becoming associate professor of mathematics at UC Irvine. His research explores noncommutative algebra and its interactions with topics such as algebraic geometry, category theory and quantum physics.

For more information, please visit the complete schedule at westmont.edu/fieldday.