Instructors: Alex Iosevich, Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of Missouri, Julia Garibaldi, a postdoctoral fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and Tyler Salisbury-Jones, a former participant in the program.
Registration: The cost per student is 0 dollars. Send the application form to:
Department of MathematicsUniversity of Missouri
Columbia, Missouri 65211
Attn: High School Mathematics Summer Program
Description of the program: The purpose of the program is to introduce motivated high school students to one of the most beautiful problems of geometric combinatorics, the Erdos distance problem. While the problem has proved very difficult to solve, it requires very little background and the basic concepts are easily accessible to high school students. The conjecture says, roughly speaking, that N points in the plane determine at least 
distinct pair-wise distances. In spite of its apparent simplicity, the problem is still unsolved!
Structure of the program: On most days, we will begin with a 50 minute lecture, from 1:00 p.m.-1:50 p.m., followed by a short break. A problem solving period of about one hour is followed by another break. We shall conclude each day by summarizing what we have learned up to that point and answering questions.