Tours Show Math Around New York City and Promote Interactive Museum

August 13, 2009

There's an interesting movement afoot in Manhattan. Forty year-old Mathematician Glen Whitney of Stony Brook is spearheading an effort to establish an interactive math museum for students. To gain attention and spur interest, the former algorithm manager at hedge-fund giant Renaissance Technologies leads mathematical tours in the city that never sleeps.

On July 16, 2009, Whitney's tour of the Lincoln Center-Columbus Circle area resulted in a piece in the New Yorker magazine.

To show that mathematics is relevant to everyday life, Whitney told two dozen walkers how hyperbolic paraboloids in a grandstand use lines to form a curved surface. The lottery, traffic management, Christopher Columbus, measurement of the earth, queuing theory, and the national debt were later topics of discussion.

To help make the museum a reality, Whitney has assembled an advisory board, which includes New York University’s Sylvain Cappell, Last June, Whitney promoted mathematics at the Math Midway, which was part of the World Science Festival Street Fair.

Source: The New Yorker, August 3