# Splash Biography

## DYLAN HENDRICKSON, ESP Teacher

Major: MIT

College/Employer: Not available.

Not Available.

## Past Classes

(Clicking a class title will bring you to the course's section of the corresponding course catalog)

M844: Building numbers from scratch in Rainstorm Summer 2021 (Aug. 14 - 15, 2021)
Imagine you meet aliens with a different system of math, which doesn't use numbers or arithmetic in the ways we're used to. How could you explain numbers arithmetic to them? How would you convince them of basic properties like x+y=y+x? In this class, we'll see one way to do this. Starting without any concept of numbers, we'll see how to successively build natural numbers, integers, rational numbers, and real numbers. For each type of number, we'll define addition and multiplication, and see how to prove some of the familiar properties they have.

M847: Winning with Quantum Entanglement in Rainstorm Summer 2021 (Aug. 14 - 15, 2021)
Alice and Bob are far apart and unable to communicate with each other. Cory sends bit $$x$$ to Alice and bit $$y$$ to Bob, and each of them will send a bit back. If both $$x$$ and $$y$$ are 1, Alice and Bob want to send different numbers back to Cory; otherwise, they want to send the same number. How well can they do this? It turns out that having quantum entanglement helps! In this class, we'll learn what quantum entanglement is and how it can be used to do better than you can classically in games like this. We'll talk about using entanglement for communication and possibly applications in quantum computing.

M513: Ramsey Theory in Rainstorm Fall 2020 (Dec. 05 - 06, 2020)
How many people do you need to put in a room to make sure four of them are either all friends or all strangers? Why does anyone care about huge numbers like Graham's number of TREE(3) come from? Ramsey theory asks how big a random object has to be for it to necessarily contain some structure.

M514: Cellular Automata in Rainstorm Fall 2020 (Dec. 05 - 06, 2020)
A cellular automaton is a grid of cells that changes according to simple rules, but can have complicated behavior. The most famous one is Conway's Game of Life. We'll discuss 1- and 2- dimensional automata, look at cool patterns they can produce, and see just how powerful they can be.

M418: Ramsey Theory in Rainstorm Spring 2020 (May. 30 - 31, 2020)
How many people do you need to put in a room to make sure four of them are either all friends or all strangers? Why does anyone care about huge numbers like Graham's number of TREE(3) come from? Ramsey theory asks how big a random object has to be for it to necessarily contain some structure.