Livingston Student Earns Math Award, Snags ‘200 Pi Dollars’

LIVINGSTON, NJ — For a glimpse into the tongue-in-cheek tone of the Steven H. Strogatz Prize for Math Communication, one needs only look at the prize of “200 Pi Dollars.”

For those not mathematically inclined, that total – which comes out to about $628 (200 x 3.14159 = $628.32) – was what Livingston high school student Rohan Jha earned via the inaugural award event.

The contest was spearheaded by the National Museum of Mathematics (MoMath) in New York City. It seeks to highlight high school students who “celebrate the universality of math” using social media, visual art, writing and dance.

The 2020 winners, their projects and the original call for entries can be viewed here.

“The purpose of Math Musings, the magazine I started in high school, was to show that math is everywhere, yet many times we are not aware of it,” Jha explained. “It is behind some of the music we play, or how nature uses it for its own optimal benefit, or it could be behind a fancy card trick, or math could help us reduce the ubiquitously observed annoyance of traffic jams during peak hours.”

According to MoMath:

“The magazine tries to humanize and enliven math in various ways: by telling anecdotes about famous mathematicians; by challenging fellow students with fun puzzles; or by leading them some deeper ideas, such as a lily pad puzzle that leads to the notion of backward recursion in finance. With clear illustrations and step-by-step instructions for magic tricks and other activities, Rohan attempts to make math fun for everyone … and succeeds admirably.”

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