GWUmath

Happy Retirement!
The legend has retired
Professor Robbie Robinson

Colloquium-Fifty years of guesses: from plastic Mastermind to silicon Wordle.
Fri, 22 March, 2024 3:00pm - 4:00pm
Speaker: E. Arthur (Robbie) Robinson (GWU)
Title: Fifty years of guesses: from plastic Mastermind to silicon Wordle.
Abstract: Since 2021, the Internet game of, Wordle now owned by the New York Times, has become a daily challenge for many people. Much online advice has been written about how to play, only some of which is good advice. Wordle strategies based on mathematical principles go back to an earlier plastic game from the 1970s called Mastermind. After a brief nostalgic tour of some of the 1970’s colorful plastic games with mathematical content, I will discuss the mathematics of Mastermind. This includes some updates of ideas from my 1976 undergraduate research project involving information theory and statistics, as well as some different ideas from a 1976 paper on Mastermind by Donald Knuth. Then I will show how all of these ideas apply directly to Wordle.

Mathematics Department Picnic Sept. 18, 2022.

The Department of Mathematics would love to hear from you and is now accepting class notes!

You can submit a class note through the url in the picture below or this link:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSffp6zMKbwh3YWZuOYuaNVeMmu38RjJdVB816XA6VbZavte5w/viewform?usp=pp_url

A talk by Lois Curfman McInnes, a senior computational scientist in the Mathematics and Computer Science Division of Argonne National Laboratory, about the different and varied careers in mathematics her own career path in life.

"The very idea of a career in mathematics has evolved and diversified and is often coupled with a specialty or area of research interest. Mathematics plays a major role in the bottom line of industrial organizations, and helps companies perform better in today’s data-driven marketplace."

https://math.columbian.gwu.edu/special-lecture-mathematics-foundation-impactful-and-exciting-careers

October 6th Math Department Picnic at Quiet Waters Park, 600 Quiet Waters Park Rd, Annapolis, MD 21403.