News

Bard College presents renowned psychologist Laurie R. Santos, who will deliver the 10th Andrew J. Bernstein ’68 Memorial Lecture. Santos, associate professor at Yale University and director of Yale Comparative Cognition Laboratory (CapLab), will give a talk, “The Evolution of Irrationality: Insights from Primates,” on Thursday, March 6, at 6:30 p.m. in the multipurpose room of the Bertelsmann Campus Center at Bard College. This event is free and open to the public. A Q&A session will follow the lecture.

This semester, the Bard Math Circle will be hosting the Purple Comet Math Meet for middle school students. Unlike other mathematics competitions at the middle school level, the Purple Comet gives students the opportunity to work collaboratively in teams of up to six. The contest covers topics seldom included in the normal curriculum, including set theory and elementary number theory, and poses exceptionally challenging problems. A series of practice sessions in the spring will culminate in the final contest, which will take place during the first week of April.

On Wednesday, February 19, 23 local high school and middle school students participated in the 15th annual American Mathematics Contest 10 at Bard College. The students competed for local, regional, and national awards as individuals and for their schools. The nationwide contest aims to spur interest in mathematics and develop talent through problem solving competitions. In 2013, more than 220,000 students from 4,200 schools participated in the AMC 10 and AMC 12 contests. This is the first year that the AMC 10 has been offered at Bard College, as a Bard Math Circle program. The Bard Math Circle is a collaborative effort between Bard math faculty and students to bring math enrichment activities to Hudson Valley youth.