The 52nd HAMPSHIRE COLLEGE SUMMER STUDIES IN MATHEMATICS

June 30 – August 10, 2024 AMHERST, MASSACHUSETTS 01002

We will again be in person and care about the health and safety of our participants. Students and staff will
be required to be fully vaccinated and boosted for covid-19, in accordance with current CDC guidelines
and definitions, along with the guidelines and expectations of Hampshire College and the Massachusetts
Department of Health. More information will be given to accepted students.

The Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics will be both demanding and expanding.

Participants are expected to spend a major portion of each day actively engaged in learning, doing, and
sharing mathematics. We discover patterns, formulate and test conjectures, invent definitions, build
theories, and collaboratively devise proofs.

The daily schedule includes 4 hours of class meetings each morning (Monday-Saturday), the Prime Time
Theorem in the late afternoon (Monday – Friday), and 3-hour evening problem sessions (Monday –
Friday). Afternoons are devoted to rest, recreation, and informal study.

Initially, Summer Studies participants will be partitioned into c.17-student Workshops, each led by a
college or university professor and two graduate students or undergraduate math majors. Each Workshop
will interactively and intensively investigate problems from many areas of mathematics, with emphasis
on unifying themes, recurrent patterns, and fruitful modes of inquiry. The particular topics are not
predetermined by a syllabus, but will be chosen to challenge the interests and abilities of the participants.
We try to avoid topics from the late high school and early college curricula; graph theory, combinatorics,
number theory, infinity, topology, complex numbers, group theory, and dynamics occur regularly. Prior
knowledge is not expected or required, and the experience of collaboratively developing these and other
mathematics will be fulfilling without study into these topics beforehand.

Wolfram Research will give HCSSiM students a copy of Mathematica 14 and a yearlong license to
Wolfram Alpha Pro, and we expect Stephen Wolfram to again visit the program. Instruction in LaTeX,
the now-standard mathematical typesetting software, will be offered.

Guest lecturers will include visiting mathematicians, authors of contest problems and math books,
competition winners, and puzzle creators. We'll have a weekly program of math films to teach, stimulate,
and inspire; and we may make our own. Classes will visit Kelly’s house for fresh corn and to play with
his collection of puzzles and games. Hampshire College’s Library’s extensive Yellow Pig collection of
math books will be moved to our dorm for the summer.

Neither grades nor credit are offered. Students will be asked twice to evaluate their own growth; these
introspections, together with evaluative comments by instructors, will form the basis for a report which
will be made available, at the student's request, to home schools, college admissions offices, potential
employers, etc.

Teachers are invited to visit the Summer Studies. Parental visits are discouraged, and other visitors
require the approval of the director eight months in advance.
Participants in the Summer Studies will not have the time to maintain part-time jobs, take online classes,
or fulfill similar obligations. There will, however, be a lot of program-related outside-of-class activities:
we publish a weekly program journal, we keep our living and working spaces clean (parental guidance
may be necessary), we show films, and we organize trips, picnics, tournaments (in chess, Go, bridge,
backgammon, Frisbee,...), and musical groups. Boredom has never been a complaint at the Summer
Studies.

The Summer Studies faculty as well as students, live in single rooms in the program’s apartment-style
dorm, and they join students for meals and recreational activities. There’ll be access to lounges with
refrigerators and a stove; internet access is available throughout the campus. In past summers, the
continual close contact among students and staff has contributed to the creation of a friendly, cooperative,
and productive academic and social community.

The air-conditioned Natural Science building will be used for our classes, and HCSSiM participants will
have access to the College library, lounges, and computer facilities. The Hampshire College dining hall
provides "all you can eat" at each meal. Most dietary needs can be accommodated. Hampshire's
recreation facilities include the Robert Crown Center and participants have enjoyed playing pool and ping
pong as well as outdoor courts for volleyball, tennis, tether ball, and basketball, fields for soccer, Frisbee,
and softball, and many nearby woods, trails, hills, and mountains.

Hampshire College, which opened in 1971 (the year of the first HCSSiM), is an accredited, independent,
coed, selective, experimenting, exciting, liberal arts college (Hampshire College). Summer Studies
participants will enjoy the use of the campus on 550 acres of woods and former farmland. Solar panels
supply approximately 100% of campus electricity. The newly-opened 17,000 square foot R.W. Kern
Center was the 9th building in the world to be certified under the Living Building Challenge: “operating
net-zero energy, water, and waste; built using materials mainly from local and regional sources; and
avoiding toxic ‘red list’ materials, right down to the duct tape allowed on the site.” Puzzles are built into
the Kern Center.

Our neighboring institutions in the Pioneer Valley of the Connecticut River—Smith, Mount Holyoke and
Amherst Colleges, and the University of Massachusetts—all have academic, social, cultural, and
recreational programs during the summer. Our Sundays are spent relaxing, hiking, biking, contradancing,
or field-tripping to Boston, to the Berkshire Music Festival at Tanglewood, or to other New England
points of interest. These activities are regarded as parts of the program.

Hampshire College admissions officers will be available for consultation, as will be representatives from
other colleges and universities. Each summer, many alums of previous HCSSiMs pay visits and share
experiences from their colleges, summer jobs, and careers.

Participants are encouraged to bring bikes, musical instruments, athletic equipment, games, puzzles,
calculators, computers, and good working habits. Explosives, illegal drugs, firearms, cars, pets, noisy
stereos, and sloppy thinking are not permitted.

The Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics was supported by the National Science
Foundation in its early years. Since the demise of NSF’s Young Scholars programs (Supporting a
National Treasure) we have been funded by HCSSiM alums and other friends. We also appreciate grants
from Big George Ventures, and the American Mathematical Society’s Epsilon Fund.

The “list price” of the 2024 Summer Studies is $5882. It covers a full room and board for 6 weeks.
HCSSiM’s small size (everyone knows everyone’s name) and large faculty (> 1 for every 4.4 students)
are critical to our success, but costly. We expect families able to pay this fee to do so. Financial concerns
should not discourage applications, and we are committed not to let our fee prevent a student from
accepting an invitation. For more information about our financial aid please click here. Financial aid
decisions are confidential and will not influence the selection of participants.

The Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics always has an excited, exciting, and large staff.
We will again find students who are strongly attracted to mathematics, and all will thrive in a vibrant
academic community. Please help.

For further information, visit hcssim.org or write:

David C Kelly, Founder & Director Amber Verser Susan Goff, Program Coordinator
[email protected] Assistant Director [email protected]
[email protected]

Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics