Columbia University professors asks, "Do you know an English word with 9 or more "u"s"?

Do you know an English word with nine or more “u”s? Can you think of a word that contains the five vowels in order? How do computers search for such words from a dictionary?

On March 5, the Math Club of JerseySTEM hosted a lecture by Professor Alfred Aho (Department of Computer Science, Columbia University) in the New Providence Memorial Library. More than 70 students and parents from Chatham, New Providence, Summit, Berkeley Heights, Millburn and Scotch Plains crowded the lecture room.

Through fun examples, Professor Aho explained the construction of regular expressions, the magic tool that we can use to specify patterns in text strings. For example, with basic operations such as concatenation and arbitrary repetition of a wildcard symbol, a simple regular expression can capture the pattern of nine “u”s. Regular expressions appear throughout computer science such as in the design of compilers. Professor Aho also demonstrated that classic Unix commands such as egrep and modern programming languages such as Python use regular expressions to search for and match patterns in text strings.
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In case you are wondering, humuhumunukunukuapuaa, a Hawaiian reef triggerfish, has nine “u”s! (Here's a youtube video to teach you how to pronounce the word.) For “abstemious”, the vowels a-e-i-o-u appear in order. Can you find more? As a homework exercise, Professor Aho challenged the students to find a long English word that is made up with distinct letters. His teaser was the 14-letter word “ambidextrously”.
Professor Aho’s lecture can be found on his webpage, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~aho/Talks/17-03-05_STEM.pptx.

At the same event, the JerseySTEM Math Club also sponsored a book prize celebration for Sophie’s Math Corner (SMC), sophiescorner.jerseystem.net. Sophie Andrews, a sophomore from Chatham High School, runs SMC with the goal of providing math competition practice for middle school mathletes. At the event, Sophie presented books on the golden ratio as prizes to the top performers: Alec, Audrey and Spencer Thompson, Jason and Julia Li, Om Desai, Gyan Ghoda and Stephen Andrews. Congratulations!

JerseySTEM is a skills based volunteers organization and it is wonderful to be able to count on local engineers and scientists, active or retired to provide our students with unique exposure to real life experiences.

JerseySTEM is a grassroots 501(c)3 operating as a co-op network of Citizen Educators - volunteer parents, professionals, retirees and corporations- whose goal is to promote excellence in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (“STEM”) education. JerseySTEM’s mission is to bridge the innovation gap in STEM education, the opportunity gap in New Jersey, and the gender gap in society. For more information about our programs, visit www.jerseystem.org or email info@jerseystem.org.

This program was sponsored by Gearhart Law, a premier intellectual property law firm based in Summit, Stashluk Plumbing, Heating, Air Conditioning and Generators, and benefited from the initial sponsorship of local digital marketing company, Theorem Inc. and local logistics company Preferred Freezer Services.