THE NEWSLETTER OF THE MATHEMATICAL ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA Olympiad Winners Honored in Washington Volume IS. Number 4 Eight winners of the U.S.A. Mathematical Olympiad were honored at an awards ceremony at the National Academy of Sciences in Wash­ In this Issue ington, DC on June 12. Chosen as first place winner from nearly 3 Letter to 550,000 students, Aleksandr Khazanov, a se­ the Editor nior at Stuyvesant High School in New York, became one of six members of the U.S. Inter­ national Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) team. 4 Arcadia Review Last summer, Khazanov was a member of the Lto R: Jay Chyung. Andrei Gnepp. Christopher Chang. Graig Helfgott. MAA President Ken Ross. Aleksandr Khazanov. U.S. IMO team which received a perfect score Sarnit Dasgupta. Jacob Lurie. and Josh Nichols-Barrer. 6 Distinguished for the first time in IMO history. Khazanov Teaching A wards will enter Penn State in the fall to study math­ South High School in Newton Center, Massa­ ematics. He plans to be a college mathematics chusetts; and Craig R. Helfgott, a senior at instructor. He says his father taught him math­ Ramaz Upper School in New York City. 9 Interview with ematics since he was age nine. "By showing Along with Khazanov, this is the second con­ MAA President me interesting combinatorics problems rather secutive year Lurie and Chang have won the than belaboring arithmetic, he induced in me a Ken Ross USAMO. Lurie also received a perfect score at vigorous interest in mathematics." the IMO last summer. These three individuals 16 1995 SlitTe Awards Top USAMO winners include Jacob Lurie and plus Chyung, Gnepp, and Nichols-Barrer made Samit Dasgupta,junior and senior, respectively, up the six-member IMO team; Dasgupta and 19 1994 MAA at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Helfgott were alternates. After four weeks of Spring, Maryland; Christopher Chang, a jun­ intensive training at the Illinois Academy of Annual Report ior at Henry M. Gunn High School in Palo Math and Sciences in Aurora, they represented Alto, California; Jay Chyung, a senior at West the U.S. in Toronto, Canada, competing with 39 Employment High School in Iowa City, Iowa; Andrei Gnepp, teams from over seventy countries. The IMO Opportunities a senior at Hawken School in Gates Mills, Ohio; took place July 13-15. A report of the compe­ Josh Nichols-Barrer, a sophomore at Newton tition will appear in the October FOCUS. AWM Announces 1995 MAA National Election Schafer Prize Winner Did you receive a ballot? Ruth Britto-Pacumio, ajun­ The MAA is conducting its biennial national ior at the Massachusetts election. Due to a mailing problem, ballots to Institute of Technology, is a few zip code areas were not delivered. Bal­ the winner of the sixth an­ lots have been remailed to members in these nual Alice T. Schafer Math­ areas. ematics Prize. The Schafer We want to give every member an opportu­ Prize is awarded to an un­ nity to vote. If you have not yet received a dergraduate woman in rec­ ballot, please notify us immediately. You can Tbe Mathematical ognition of excellence in contact the MAA toll free at 1-800-331-1622. Association of America mathematics and is sponsored by the Associa­ A new ballot will be sent to you. Because of 1529 Eighteenth Street. NW tion for Women in Mathematics (AWM). Ms. the possibility that there are still members Wa~hingt()n. DC 20mt1 Britto-Pacumio will receive a cash prize of who have not received ballots, election re­ $1000. sults will not be announced until October. See Schafer Prize on page 3 FOCUS August 1995 FOCUS Editorial FOCUS is published by The Mathematical Association of America, 1529 Eighteenth Congratulations Street Northwest, Washington, DC 20036- 1385, six times a year: February, April, One thing that struck me as I was putting together this issue of FOCUS was that, as a June, August, October, and December. profession, we seem to like giving awards for achievements. The two front page articles Editor and Chair of the MAA are about awards ceremonies, and in the pages that follow you will find several more Newsletter Editorial Committee: Keith announcements of awards. We give awards to students for their performance as students J. Devlin, Saint Mary's College of and to faculty for their performance as teachers. California The awards reported in FOCUS are just the tip of the iceberg, the national awards. For Associate Editor: DonaldJ. Albers, MAA most of us, the college or university where we work has its own range of awards for Associate Executi ve Director and Director students and professors, and often for graduate student instructors as well. That's a lot of Publications and Programs of awards. Managing Editor: Harry Waldman, MAA This plethora of academic awards is, I believe, a particularly American phenomenon. I Production Specialist: Amy spent most of my academic career to date in my native England where, although a few Stephenson Fabbri, MAA university departments have prizes for the best undergraduate students, it would never Proofreader: Meredith Zimmerman, occur to anyone to give awards to an instructor for outstanding performance in the MAA classroom. The unspoken assumption is that you don't give an award to someone for Copy Editor: Nancy Wilson, Saint Mary's simply doing their job well. At least, I assume that is the assumption-being an unspoken College of California assumption, no one ever spoke about it, so I cannot know for sure if there is a rationale for not giving teaching awards or if the very idea simply never occurred to anyone. Letters to the editor should be addressed to: Keith Devlin, Saint Mary's College of It's an interesting question. Should we give awards to people for doing well the job for California, P.O. Box 3517, Moraga, CA which they are employed and paid? I am sure the existence of an award does not itself 94575; e-mail: [email protected]. lead to better performance. People excel because they want to succeed, not because they The FOCUS subscription price to are trying to win a prize. The real reward for a semester's good teaching comes at the individual members of the Association is semester's end, when we look back on what we have accomplished and grade the papers, $6.00, included in the annual dues. and maybe receive thanks from a few of our students. So why give awards? (Annual dues for regular members, exclusive of annual subscription prices for Anyone who has spent time at both British and American colleges and universities MAA journals, are $68.00. Student and cannot fail to have noticed that, overall, the standard of teaching in America is far higher unemployed members receive a 66 percent than in Britain. (I deliberately used 'overall' because, as always when human perfor­ discount; emeritus members receive a 50 mance is concerned, there are plenty of individuals who buck the trend.) In Britain the percent discount; new members receive a student at a university is still by and large regarded as a bit of a nuisance, someone who 40 percent discount for the first two membership years.) gets in the way of the real work of the day. Though you will certainly find similar attitudes in the USA, my own observations tell me that by and large the climate on this side of the Copyright © 1995 by The Mathematical Atlantic is very different. And awards are, I think, an important part of the picture. Association of America (Incorporated). Educational institutions may reproduce There are surely so many excellent college and university teachers around that most of articles for their own use, but not for sale, them cannot possibly ever win an award. But the very existence of those awards makes provided that the following citation is used: a clear and highly visible statement as to what we, as a profession, think is important. "Reprinted with permission of FOCUS, They affirm what we are about. Awards are not re-wards. They are not incentives. They the newsletter of The Mathematical Association of America (Incorporated)." are a way of saying "This is what we value and what we strive to achieve." And as such, they are very valuable. Second-class postage paid at Washington, DC and additional mailing offices. So I give my hearty congratulations to all those awards winners whose names you will Postmaster: Send address changes to the find in this FOCUS. And I give equally hearty congratulations to all those who did not Membership and Subscriptions De­ win an award, but who nevertheless did an excellent job. partment, The Mathematical Association of America, 1529 Eighteenth Street Northwest, Washington, DC 20036-1385. -Keith Devlin ISSN: 0731-2040 Printed in the United States of America. The above opinions are those ofthe FOCUS editor and do not necessarily represent the Printed on recycled paper. official view of the MAA. 2 August 1995 FOCUS Gale's article seems to agree that Nash Fine, I imagine Gale saying, definitions Letter to the Editor defined the concept, but then it says that deserve credit. But then the right people the concept had been around long before deserve the credit, and Nash is not the right To the Editor: (indeed in the economics literature­ person here. Someone else was first, or perhaps many people. But this is no dif­ I reply to the lovely article by David Gale didn't Cournot use it?). Consequently, ferent than the situation with theorems. To in the April FOCUS about Nash's game Gale seems to regard Nash's (re)definition name an example from a related area, Kuhn theory equilibrium theorem.