by Melissa Cerny & Katie Ziegler

Even without the hay ride, we all had fun at the Annual Math Picnic at the Ramsay family farm. As the lemma reads, (not the llama, Dr. Ramsay only has goats and chickens) good food always implies good conversation if and only if critters are running around your ankles. Participants enjoyed playing volleyball and frisbee, jumping on the trampoline, chasing chickens, and playing pass the child featuring Brian, the youngest guest at the picnic. The presence of Dr. Hales was certainly missed, however, we were fortunate enough to have in our company Dr. Beane. Many thanks to everyone who brought food and grilled burgers and thanks to the Ramsays for their generous hospitality. I guess we'll meet in Ireland next year --we heard there will be a hay ride!

by Mindy Jenkins

Activities for Wooster's Student Mathematics Association Chapter are up and running! We've had a few meetings this semester, and we have many great ideas for activities that we would like to do. The high school math contest, a trip to the Inventor's Hall of Fame in Akron, and a dinner with recent Wooster graduates are a few of the things we have planned.

Our most time-consuming activity is our annual high school math contest, which is organized by students in SMAAC, along with lots of help from our advisors, Linda Barbu and Pam Pierce. We have started coming up with problems for Round I of the competition which takes place this semester. In the coming months we will need a lot of help to come up with more problems for both rounds of the contest, to stuff and seal envolopes, and many other miscellaneous details.

Inventure Place is hosting a mathematics exhibit until 

Another activity that we are hoping to organize is an informal dinner with recent Wooster grads who majored in math and computer science. We are interested in hearing what they have been doing since graduation (whether or not it is math or CS related). We are hoping to invite a few more Wooster alumni to present more formal talks on Mathematics after Graduation. If any of you alumni out there are interested in coming to Wooster to share with us what you have done with your math degree, please contact me, Mindy Jenkins by email: je97ml09@acs.wooster.edu, or by real mail: C.O.W. P.O. Box c-1925, Wooster, OH 44691.

We are very excited about all of these plans for the semester, and we hope that many people will be willing to help make them happen. If you are interested in helping out in any way, come to one of our meetings. Signs are posted in Taylor to announce meeting dates, times and locations. If you have any questions, please contact one of the officers: President, Mindy Jenkins; Vice President, Joe Zimmerman; Secretary, Katie Ziegler; Treasurer, Scott Rose; and Infinity Editor, Ben Adair.

by Matthew Brahm

One weekend early last spring a group of students competed in the 12th annual COMAP Mathematical Modeling competition. The team of Gayan Bandara and Indradeep Ghosh, with occasional help from Vikas Malhorta, worked furiously on the exam which took place from noon Friday February 9, until 5:00 PM Monday February 12th. Participants in the competition have three days in which to formulate, test and write up a mathematical model to solve a question from some real world setting. Students may use any resources they want; books, periodicals, class notes, computers, but they are not allowed to speak with anyone outside of the team about the problem.