## Girls’ Angle Bulletin, Volume 10, Number 2

Volume 10, Number 2 opens with an interview with Doris Schattschneider, professor emerita of mathematics at Moravian College. Among many other things, Professor Schattschneider was the first woman to serve as editor of the MAA’s Mathematics Magazine. This interview was conducted by Girls’ Angle summer intern Sandy Pelkowsky. As has been our practice, we truncate the interview in the electronic version. For the full version, please subscribe!

The cover is a picture of the function $x^2 + y^2$, modulo the prime number 503. For more examples and an explanation of how the image was made, check out this issue’s Mathematical Buffet.

We feature a contribution from Villanova assistant professor of mathematics Beth Malmskog, Quilt-Doku! Prof. Malmskog shows how she went from a quilting friend’s request to unsolved problems in mathematics. She blogs for the American Mathematical Society – check it out!

We’d also like to take special note of a member contribution in Member’s Thoughts.  Here, π takes us along on her derivation of the volume of a regular n-simplex. An n-simplex is an n-dimensional generalization of the triangle.

Emily and Jasmine continue their pursuit of triangles with 3 nice angles but only 2 sides of integer length. While they make some progress in their investigation of the minimal polynomials of cosines of nice angles, the journey begins to appear rather daunting!

Last issue, Anna B. found a recursive formula for the number of special tilings of a 1 by $\sqrt{2}$ rectangle. In this issue, she manages to guess the closed-form formula, but is unable to prove it. Can you help her prove that the close-form formula she found is correct?

Addie Summer explains how she discovered the quadratic formula. In the process, she shows that the algebraic technique known as “completing the square” corresponds to a natural geometric idea: shifting the parabola sideways so that it is symmetric about the y-axis.

In Notes from the Club, we mention a few of the things that have been happening at the Girls’ Angle club and give a sampling of problems from our traditional end-of-session Math Collaboration.

We hope you enjoy it!

Finally, a reminder: when you subscribe to the Girls’ Angle Bulletin, you’re not just getting a subscription to a magazine. You are also gaining access to the Girls’ Angle mentors.  We urge all subscribers and members to write us with your math questions or anything else in the Bulletin or having to do with mathematics in general. We will respond. We want you to get active and do mathematics. Parts of the Bulletin are written to induce you to wonder and respond with more questions. Don’t let those questions fade away and become forgotten. Send them to us!

We continue to encourage people to subscribe to our print version, so we have removed some content from the electronic version.  Subscriptions are a great way to support Girls’ Angle while getting something concrete back in return.  We hope you subscribe!

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## About girlsangle

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