Math Movement

Today is the Freshmen Cake Race at Davidson College. A few hundred cakes are baked by members of the town and brought to the college before the afternoon run.  The tradition began with the incoming class of ‘34 and their running a mandatory 1.7 mile race. Since then, it has been “On your mark…get set…go for Cake” for every class except once during WWII and once in the early 70’s.  The race was established by Davidson track coach Pete Whittle with the goal of uncovering hidden talent in the incoming freshmen class and asking them to come out for the track team. The cake was the incentive for a good race!

Davidson College spirit mark

My family has baked at least one cake every year.  This year, we decided to combine math with culinary art.  We wanted to decorate the cake with the spirit mark of the paw print. Rather than replicating the piece in icing, we decided to lean on my math and created an M&M mosaic with a computer program I wrote in Matlab for an upcoming book. With a few artistic alterations to the coloring, we created the cake (and another using M&Ms and white chocolate chips) for a freshmen who will finish the race…it will be a piece of cake! Upperclass students often stalk the freshmen. The eating of the cakes becomes a wonderful time of fellowship and community. Maybe a math or computer science student, who has taken a class where I discussed the math behind a mosaic, will share this cake and explain the math.