Cirque des Mathématiques

The Circus! While it's easy to get mesmerized by beautiful, daring and graceful performances, have you contemplated what goes into creating these acts? While routines such as aerial acrobatics, juggling, balancing acts, and magic may not at first glance seem mathematical, they in fact require a methodical composition of techniques which have a rich analytical and logical structure. We will spend the semester developing creative mathematical techniques to analyze a variety of circus arts from the perspectives of both pure and applied mathematics.