New Normal 2020 by Ideaal! (Abacus)

S Association magazine of W.S.G. Abacus

Staff Says

Gerard Jeurnink A Day With...

Lilian Spijker Interview

Committees

New Normal 2020

INDEX 4 5 5 6

Columns Your Story Internal Thoughts The Pen Staff Says Mathematical A statistical analysis of 14 Among us About my bachelor 17 assignment

4 7, 15 7, 16 8 11 19, 21

Fun Puzzle Solution Reviews Puzzles A day With... Meme Page Interviews

Editorial Dear Readers! As a freshman I joined the Ideaal! in September 2015, convinced by Mariya. In the meantime, five years have passed and many things changed in our amazing committee. After so many years, I feel like it’s time to move on and let my colleagues take their committee picture without me. As a goodbye I’d like to look back on these five years and find out what things were going on in the Ideaal!.

lines and team lay-out moments. In terms of the magazine: did you know that the Ideaal! used to only have eight pages? Nowadays, about 24 pages is what we aim for. We have a bigger variety of pieces, more puzzles and pictures. Moreover, after some brainstorm sessions, the lay-out was upgraded. One of the upgrades was the use of page-wide pictures; very fancy huh?

First of all, I started of as a general member of the committee, quickly to be charged as the secretary. LaTeX became my new best friend, even though we didn’t really know each other that well yet. You feel like a real hacker making minutes in LaTeX as a freshman, right? After some time, my position in the committee was changed to chair, which taught me many things about keeping track of everything happening and about how to chair a meeting. Nowadays, Lavinia and Jorg are doing a great job as chair and secretary.

Thirdly, I’ve seen many people come and go over the years. I have worked with Dirk Jan, Eva, Mariya, Maike, Sem, Sagy, Cintha, Jitse, Carmen, Timon, Lavinia, Jorg and Emma. Also, the responsible board members (Sagy, Wouter, Mariya, Fleur, Sanne and Daan) have always been enthusiastic about out committee; most even wrote pieces and asked other Abacus members to write some as well. We even convinced Sagy to join the committee as a general member after his board year!

Secondly, the Ideaal! has grown quite a bit. I’m talking about both the committee and the magazine here. The committee has grown in diversity (we used to be with only women; now almost half of the members is male) and professionality. In these five years, a script on when and how to ask people to write pieces was introduced, as well as structural dead-

Editors: Emma Donkers Jorg Gortemaker Daan van Kats Lavinia Lanting Timon Veurink

• 7 December GMA • 9 December Who is the Mole? • 16 December Kantelpiet • 6 January Scientific Lounge FMC Games Night • 27 January Board interest lunch

I’m sure after I leave the Ideaal! more amazing events will take place in this even more amazing committee. To my colleagues: enjoy your time in this sparklingly amazing committee! To everyone reading this; enjoy this jolly amazing Ideaal! . Yanna

Colophon Editorial address: W.S.G. Abacus Postbus 217, 7500 AE Enschede Phone: 053 - 489 3435 ideaal@abacus.utwente.nl www.abacus.utwente.nl

AGENDA

Guest writers: Luuk van der Werf (Internal Thoughts), Sanne Oude Veldhuis (The Pen), Gerard Jeurnink (Staff Says), Jorn de Jong (Puzzle), Eline Peeters (Review: Linea Recta), Daan Pluister (Puzzle), Matthew Maat (About my bachelor assignment), Diana Dalenoord (Interview: Pranab Mandal).

Ideaal! is the magazine issue of Wiskundig Studiegenootschap Abacus and the department of Applied Mathematics. The responsibility for the articles published in this magazine lies with the original author(s). The period of notice of Abacus is four weeks before the end of the association year (August 1st). That means that you must cancel your membership before July 4th. If you have forgotten to cancel your membership before that time, you will pay contribution for another college year. Would you like to cancel your membership? Send an email to board@abacus.utwente.nl.

Your Story Text: Emma Donkers Obviously last summer did not go as I had planned it. I was supposed to go to Russia on a study trip and travel through Scandinavia afterwards. Instead, the first few weeks I worked really hard so a lot of performing arts association could rehearse outside on campus safely. I looked after the house and the pets of my parents for a while when they went camping in Drenthe, which also wasn’t exactly a vacation for me. The only thing I did that felt like a holiday was going on a 5 day road trip with two of my friends. We borrowed a car and only stayed at each other’s parents’ houses, so it was pretty Coronasafe. It started when I woke up very early to take the train from Enschede to Ede, to pick up the car. Then I drove back to Enschede to pick up my

friends, and we proceeded to drive to pretty much the most northern part of Friesland there is: Ternaard. We only missed two exits on the way there (oops) so we arrived there around 6 pm. I had been travelling all day, but it was a lot of fun driving around with my friends and hearing about the place one of them grew up. I did not grow up in a small town, so it was a weird experience for me when everybody we saw on the streets waved at us. We explored Friesland a little the next day, but when it turned out the nice weather caused a lot of people to be outside, we decided to hang out at a less busy place: the garden. The next morning we travelled to the next stop, and I drove over the “Afsluitdijk” for the first time in my life. Turns out it is pretty boring, especially if there is work boing done on the road and you have to wait for half an hour before you can start driving again. After a few more hours of driving we arrived at the

Puzzle Solution: Pi Sudoku Text: Timon Veurink When solving this sudoku, the hardest step is the eigth digit. This is the digit in cell 5,4 and can be solved by considering that every number fails to fit in that spot except 2. All the places where you can put fives and sevens in the block left to it would fail if cell 5,4 would be either one of them. Eventually, this should be your solution:

small town my other friend grew up: De Zilk. It is a town not quite on the beach, where once again, everyone waved at us. The weather turned even nicer, so the next day we found a quiet place on the beach and I swam in the ocean for the first time this year. Of course, we all got pretty intense sunburn, but it was a nice day anyway. The day after I got to show my friends around the town I grew up: Ede. It is always interesting to show people the places you know very well, because they see the new things that you hardly notice anymore. A pair of fresh eyes can show you a whole new perspective. And with that insight, we went back to Enschede, and August was almost over already. It’s been a while, but it is good to know that even when the world is in crisis, you can create nice memories.

Internal Thoughts Text: Luuk van der Werf Do you know that feeling when your nose is totally clogged up? You can’t properly breathe, and you imagine how good it would feel to just have empty nostrils. Then you think: ‘when this is over, I will never take breathing trough my nose for granted again.’ After this, when you are able to breathe freely again, you will forget about it, and this cycle repeats. You might question where this story is going to, but I think a clogged up nose really resembles the current situation quite well. Until March we were breathing perfectly fine: we were living the epic lives we were just used to. Then everything rapidly changed. In a couple of days our noses were entirely clogged

up. We all thought it would be over soon, but it turned out to be quite different. Days became weeks, and weeks became months. It made us realize what a life we were living and made us appreciate it a lot more. Then slowly it became possible to breathe a bit again. This ‘new normal’ was quite okay actually, when compared to the previous situation. It didn’t take long before we took this for granted. Living with only one clogged up nostril felt quite normal. But then it all went down pretty fast. Our nostrils are clogging up again, and it is getting harder and harder to breathe. It has only been two days now, but I am already longing back to breathing through one nostril, how strange it might sound. And as you see, I am already taking the current situation for granted, but maybe it all gets even worse.

I hope somewhere this academic year we can go back to free breathing, with which I mean living life as we were used to. Having drinks, parties, activities and opening up the Abacus room for public: it is all far away now. At the moment I would be more than happy to go back to one clogged up nostril, even though I would hate the idea if you asked me in February. This shows how fast things can change.

I have to do it at home, by myself. With my laptop. With Netflix. And Videoland.

the turnover of cinemas worldwide is expected to drop with 66%. It is expected that they won’t recover from this hit until at least 2024, while in the meantime the growth of streaming services is expected to be 26% and it is even expected that they will have twice the turnover in 2024 compared to 2019. In 2015, the turnover of cinemas was still three times as high as streaming services, but later this year, it is expected that for the first time in history, streaming services will have a higher turnover than cinemas.

This also brings me back to my point. As we all have seen, the life we were living is not as guaranteed as we thought it was. That’s why I want to encourage you all to life live to the fullest. Make something of it, even if your nose is a bit clogged up. September 2020.

The Pen Text: Sanne Oude Veldhuis It is the beginning of a new academic year and since some say: a good start is half of the work, I decided to start this year off great. I decided to stop postponing everything, work hard and get stuff done. Well, if you know me, you are probably not surprised to hear that that didn’t work out. In the first few weeks it worked, but after that I went back to my old habits and started to postpone and forget work I had to do. As an example, I said I would finish this piece at the latest during the weekend. Well guess what? It is Sunday and I have just started writing this piece. The reason my resolutions always fail is partially because that is just who I am, I don’t think I can ever be the person who does something way ahead of time. But this time, I also think I can blame the fact that

See, since the beginning of the Corona crisis, all streaming services saw a big increase in their turnover and amount of memberships. In the first quarter of 2020, Netflix got 15,8 million new subscribers, compared to 2,7 million last year this time. In the second quarter this was ‘only’ 10,1 million new subscribers. It is clear to see that a lot of people turned to watching series and movies during the start of the global pandemic. After the beginning of the pandemic, the European Commission even asked all the streaming services to lower their streaming quality because they were afraid that the internet would be congested.

So when this is all over, we should probably move from watching movies alone at home to watching movies with friends in the cinema, before cinemas will disappear.

Companies that suffer from this increase in streaming platform subscribers are the cinemas. In 2020,

Staff Says Text: Gerard Jeurnink Higher during times

education pandemic

It’s the 17th century. An outbreak of the Bubonic Plague reaches London. Cambridge University closed her doors and Isaac Newton was forced to return home. During this difficult time he developed his Gravitation theory. So in history we have also seen that education institutions had to face epidemics. Newton shows that academic theoretical research doesn’t have to suffer from that. However, I believe that the transfer of knowledge is performed best face-to-face. Our educational system of universities can handle a shut down for a couple of months, but because of the unpredictability of Covid-19 we have to fear serious consequences for our beloved students.

disaster. I no longer had a faceto-face encounter with my classroom and I couldn’t check anymore whether my explanation was simultaneously understood by student’s visual expression. From the point of view of an attending student it also gave frustration, creating and comparing solutions with mates during tutorials was no longer possible. This remote performance was called a ‘flabby extract’ of our profession by a programme director. Indeed, what distinguishes this from distance learning in which every activity can be done without the help of an instructor? Not only student’s intellectual progress, but also their mental health is in danger. Special attention should be paid to those who are vulnerable because of their condition. Naturally it is even harder for the freshmen who have missed the introduction activities. The situation can force them to drop out. A student participating in a remedial program can be hit by isolation from ordinary (social) intercourses. The total lockdown for primary and secondary education stopped after summer holidays in the Netherlands. They are very lucky to be back in class.

The break out in the Netherlands of COVID-19 (March 2020) made the reliable education no longer possible. Lecturers had to change their teaching position from in front of the lecture hall towards their homes. Students took their positions behind electronic devices as well, in order to attend the current courses. What was the impact on quality for higher education? And which implications do the measures taken by government have? Speaking as a educationalist (dedicated person), the change was a

Mathematician Ben Slagter was seen on television this week. According to him the government lacks a clear explanation about their policy. He advises to bring down the reproduction number with a total lock down and test, trace and isolate on a larger scale. Indeed, clarity is not one of cabinet’s strengths, but

Slagter’s wish for a lock down according to his model will disappoint many educators. As stated, the condition of our fellow students is under threat and the impact might be felt for the coming years. In what sense can we try to avoid these damnable thoughts? Hopefully the development of an effective vaccine will speed up. So we can return to the ‘normal’ circumstances and welcome again large groups in huge lecture halls. But honestly, I don’t think it will ever be the same again. The number of online courses will increase (with courses taken from different academies), alternating with onsite ones. And I believe this improves our teaching and creates challenges for the lecturers. Taking exams online is a different story, at least for mathematics. This should be forbidden, it undermines the logical and structural competences of the student. So in the future we expect more distance education, even if a vaccine for the Covid disease is available. The boards of the universities will not take any risk that a new pandemic surprises them. They will support a lecturer teaching with old fashioned didactics in a virtual class, broadcasted live and student’s possibility to review. Separately, more (small) video’s are available to deepen a topic, or to save time in the limited broadcast (an effective recorded lecture lasts approximately half an hour). Students are welcomed at campus, but not as frequently as it used to be. For sure, technology offers us several opportunities to act in this ‘new normal’. In my opinion mathematics presents many difficulties in the virtual adaptation process. I prefer to teach our students live talking about the typical language and notation in mathematics, not going off the stage.

Review Text: Lavinia Lanting You all must have heard of the Greek deities, right? Zeus, the king of the gods and god of thunder, or Athena, the goddess of strategy and knowledge, or Aphrodite, goddess of beauty and sensuality. Suppose they were real and still lived today. In which conditions would they live and how would they deal with today’s society? Would they still be almighty and powerful or would they face the same struggles humans have to confront each day? These are only a few of the questions which Marie Phillips aims to give an answer to in her book ‘Gods Behaving Badly’. As the title may suggest, not all is easy and dandy for the Greek gods: being immortal makes it difficult to find and undergo new and exciting experiences, nobody believes in them anymore, nobody respects them anymore, their powers are slowly but surely disappearing and they all live together in an old and empty house on a very low budget. And that is not all: Artemis cannot stand anyone anymore (especially her twin Apollo), Aphrodite is openly in a relationship with every single god in the house, Apollo wastes his power on punishing human girls who refute his flirting and Eros has become a Christian. The gods and

goddesses of Ancient Greece lead a boring and poor life as they fear mortality might catch up to them and end the world as we know it, but all is about to change as the lives of two humans, Alice and Niel, get entangled with those of the Greek deities. While the premise of this book may only attract few who are interested in Greek mythology, it is worth reading in spite of the misconception the title may bring: Marie Phillips, through this book, combines mythology and fantasy with a serious and confronting reflection on human nature. Her protagonists, while gods, are all delightfully human: even more so as they discover their mortality and dependence on human belief. Furthermore, her humour and cynicism pervade the pages and sentences she writes granting her story strength and wit in the form of straight to the point (and very much mean at times) comments on the behaviour of her characters.

lieves in), Marie Phillips also leaves her readers with one last important piece of wisdom to think about: that men always portray their gods as human-like and that, therefore, even gods can behave badly.

Marie Phillips’ bestseller is a book that brings a smile to your face while also making you realise how utterly pointless some of our actions in this world are, all while humanizing the gods we for so long adored according to our history. In humanizing these figures we so often see as far above us (in whichever shape or state of being one be-

Puzzle Text: Jorn de Jong The birthday of Abacus has now passed, but it’s still time to party (hopefully, if it’s allowed). Do you know enough about the birthday of Abacus to solve this puzzle? The key to solve the first one is the date of the dies. 1) fggt bgi! ygs pgauht qvh omlpq jnlq. ogl qvh phegdt jnlq ygs dhht qvh yhnl, ndt tgd’q ygs qly qg evhnq!

Of course mathematics uses an i and not a j. 2) OVLGPAAMZIPMEABPTNS A L E H L X VS E G P OT B P N V T E E C MRSXPTESPHBXLEEPGXAY 3) ..-.-......-..-.-..-......--...-......-...-..-.--..-.--..---...-.--.-.-.-.-..--..-.....--.-...-..-....-..--.-.-....--.-.........-..-.-..--.-.-......-..-..-....--.-.--..

A Day With...

This time we have had the pleasure to speak with the study advisor for Applied Mathematics, Lilian Spijker, who especially nowadays is busy ensuring the best for students of AM. Text: Jorg Gortemaker and Lavinia Lanting

Please introduce yourself

Usually that goes in a more spontaneous way according to what I’m thinking about at that moment. If I would introduce myself to a group of first years I would start with: I am the study adviser for mathematics. I have been doing this for about 9 years. Aside from for mathematics I’ve also been the study adviser for the master of computer science. As of this year I’ve gotten the chance to be only the study adviser for AM, since following both was just too much work. I live in a village pretty close to the University of Twente. It is located pretty nicely within the triangle of Enschede, Hengelo and Losser: it’s the village Lonneker. It’s a nice village, so if you like cycling, perhaps you could once cycle through it. It’s pretty small, but it is rather nice. It has a cosy square, with two restaurants and a supermarket. I am living there happily and it has a lot of greenery, just like the campus. The campus feels like a second home to me: also beautifully green. I love the nature and there’s a lot of different birds

on campus. It’s the combination of Lonneker and the campus: half of my time I’m on the university, the rest of the time at home. A bit less at the university perhaps.

I see you are currently also working at the university, is that a conscious choice?

Today I have a lunch with the first years in the break. The management is there as well. I asked if I could join so the first years could also see my face, instead of only online. I thought it would be handy to join. This morning I had a meeting at home with my colleague study advisers so I just travelled in half an hour from home to the campus so I can go to the lunch. It is also a conscious choice to be on campus on Wednesday and Friday in case people would rather meet physically.

What does a typical day look like?

Actually, it’s pretty boring: it’s just a lot of conversations and reading my mail or working out quite a lot

of small organisational things. I start my morning, between eight and nine, by working through my mail, and quite often between nine o’ clock and two o’clock my day is full with conversations. Usually I would also keep an hour free afterwards to work through my mail, but due to Covid and how hectic the current situation is that hasn’t been going so well. I have just been reading through my mail outside of the standard hours. Like this during the day I can mostly have conversations. The conversations are mainly with the students individually, but I also had weekly meetings with the colleague study advisers in the beginning. In the meantime this has become once every two weeks again. I am currently still trying to meet weekly with Pranab and Judith about what we are hearing from the education side of things: what is going well and what isn’t going so well. Of course, we are only talking about students if a student has requested to get one of his or her questions answered by Pranab or Judith. Otherwise it will mainly be about the organisation of things.

How did you become a study adviser?

It arose mainly from the wish to support people. I’ve always enjoyed that part of my work, even before I was study adviser. I worked in the field of human resources for ten years, of which I also substituted the head of the faculty for a year. And then there came a new head of the faculty. Then I found myself thinking:“now I am going back to the function of HR adviser. Do I think this will be something I will find myself doing and enjoying the coming 5 years?” This is something I often ask myself. I realised then I enjoyed working with my colleagues, but as you’re working in HR you are always between the management and the workplace itself. So you are basically constantly in a balancing act: you want to help your fellow workers as effectively as you can, but the manager also has to agree with it. He might as well say he’s not going to do anything with your proposal. Furthermore, I found out you will eventually have to work with people who will say things like: “I’m 55. I don’t have to retrain anymore. I am already reaching the retirement age.” My view has always been that you can always retrain: you’re never too old to learn. So it is pretty much the contrary of what I think myself. It’s a good thing to keep trying to reinvent yourself, and then I thought about what I really enjoyed about that work, and that was mainly the coaching of people. Also when things are less good (I have had to guide dismissal processes for example), if you do that in a respectful manner and you try to find solutions together, “what now?” and “what are the possibilities?”: those things spoke to me. Then the opening for student adviser came by, and the head of the faculty asked me if that wouldn’t be something for me and then I re-

alised that is exactly what I like the most about working in HR. It was a week before the deadline of the opening. I checked if I was able to manage it from home and I thought I could, so I did it and I have never regretted it since. I enjoy working with the mathematical students, the computer science students and just in general working with the more technical students.

You said you always look back and ask yourself: “Will this be something I will enjoy the coming 5 years?” What is your feeling about being the study adviser for Applied Mathematics currently regarding this statement?

I am still doing this job with a lot of enthusiasm. I am rather confident I will still enjoy this the coming years, so I don’t really feel the urgent need to look around for something else. I still always keep looking around and think to myself what more there is out there which might help me improve myself, so in that sense I might decide to change again at some point. But right now we have formed a new team with Pranab and Judith, so I’m very enthusiastic about seeing how everything comes along and if things will change. For the time being I’d say I’m where I want to be.

What do you enjoy most about being a study adviser?

I find the sphere within the student group, especially within AM, very pleasant. It also suits my way of thinking. I too am not really keen on decorating a situation with words: it is what it is. This is also a recurring trait within the mathematics group and the computer science group: what you see is what you get. No double agendas or things that are

presented under a more positive light than in reality. This is something I very much like. I also like how the group is very much open to feedback: what could be done differently? If something isn’t going as hoped, they want to change and want to create something for themselves in their future. For some students it takes longer to ask for help, but that’s okay. It is also a group that shows a lot of respect for one another. The combination of all of these factors is what makes this job so enjoyable for me.

What did you study yourself?

For my bachelor I followed a study in HR at the University of Applied Sciences Haarlem. I already was working at the UT, so after that I just started working there fulltime. I have now been working for 30 years at the UT: I have also seen how a lot of different faculties within the UT function, so I experienced how a lot of different processes work out here. I worked in the educational group, where I saw how teachers are supported. I worked for the central services, where I was able to see how the central policy is applied within the faculties. I now do again work rather directly related to education through coaching and assistance. I have seen a bit of everything: this kind of completes the circle, because of which I now understand why certain decisions are taken. Even when you think something could be done better you should always realise that not always that is achievable. This knowledge can be very useful as a study adviser, although when I started the description of this role was rather vague. A lot of faculties also thought only a person with knowledge of the subject could be a study adviser for a certain study. The two people working before me as study adviser also had no mathematical background. From there the idea

started existing that it is enough as long as you, as a study adviser, are able to keep well in touch with the group who has the requested background and have a good relationship like I do with Judith and Pranab. That is also because students don’t come with questions about the content of a course or subject, but about things around the study that may hinder them. For this you need other skills. This has been a development of past years and nowadays very few study advisers have a background in the study the coach students for. I think this also works as protection against the temptation to talk about the subjects instead of the hindrances students deal with. In addition, if you work for a certain study for a long time you also learn rather well where the pitfalls are situated. I think initially the position was thought be more that of an insider, but tutors and the teachers who guide freshmen are much more suited for exchanging with students how to tackle a certain subject and how to study.

Do you have any hobbies?

During the Covid-19 time none, because I don’t really have time for hobbies. I have to work a lot of hours currently to be able to handle everything. What really makes me happy is nature: just taking a walk with the dogs, going outside. I have two small dogs: Bo and Beertje. Bo looks a bit like Paddington, so actually we should have named Bo Beertje. But they are two small dogs: Bo needs a bit more convincing to go on a walk, while Beertje has a lot of energy. We live at the edge of the village, so you can immediately walk into the greenery and I really love that. I also always try to listen carefully to the birds while talking a walk. It gives me some peace. We also have a garden, which I really like taking care of. So actually my

hobbies are mostly activities which help me empty my head. Running is also something I like, but also doing something together with my children: my husband may also come along. Although I will say that my children are currently at a bit of a teenager phase: my daughter still wants to come along sometimes, but my son has his group of friends which is currently far more important than anything else. I should be content if he once in a while makes time to do something together.

For this we are also coached, so for the first time I am also sitting at the other end of the table. It’s rather easy to talk to someone and ask the questions, but I realise that it’s really difficult to openheartedly talk to someone: I think it’s good that we get to experience this feeling, so that we can keep that in mind.

What are your goals for this year?

I like a bit of everything that has to do with numbers in general and, based on what I’ve heard, I like that you finally have a moment where everything falls into place: you try and look at a problem from many different angles and eventually you succeed in finding a solution.

Within the UT we have a learning line for study advisers: every study adviser should follow this just as every teacher should get a qualification to be able to teach. This year I’ll try to complete this in the best way possible. I also have a few ideas which I’d really like to implement within AM, but I first have to discuss those with management. This is also part of a module for the learning line: choosing an own subject and researching it as well doing something with it which could be interesting for other study advisers as well, but I’d also really like for it to be specifically linked to mathematics. I am also trying to look into which group of students we still haven’t done something for which might be interesting organising: I’d like to make a goal out of this to also discuss with Pranab and Judith. For this the policy within the faculty would be playing a very important role, which is again also part of the learning line. Those are my goals for the next quartile at least. It’s nice, now that the master of computer science has been passed onto my colleague Ellen, that I have time to do this. This is something I had been missing the past few years: there simply wasn’t enough time to do these things.

Since you’re the study adviser of Applied Mathematics, what is your favourite mathematical theorem?

Any final words you would like to share?

Be yourself: don’t change for somebody else because you think you’ll then have more value and will fit better within the group. Believe in yourself and believe in what you can do: don’t let yourself be discouraged while you did well in high school or during your first year, even when it isn’t going as you wish it would. Keep in mind you have done well and that you can do that again. For AM in general, hold onto the nice atmosphere there is here and at Abacus and how valuable that is for the entire study.

Meme Page

Just Abacus things...

A statistical analysis of Among Us Text: Jorg Gortemaker In the popular game Among Us, the idea is to try and vote out the impostors from the group. Whilst worrying about who might be an impostor, crewmates also have to complete several tasks, yet another way to win the game. A lot of strategic thinking is necessary to win as a crewmate and impostors have to watch out quite a bit to not be found out. One of these well known strategies is to never vote out somebody when there’s 7 people left: this is because if you’re wrong and there will still be two impostors left with 6 people they will kill 2 people and win the game since they cannot be voted off if they make up half of the crew. In this article I will mainly discuss some strategies regarding tasks in the game and how we can use statistics to give an edge. Wires and their permutations The information given here will all be done for the map: The Skeld. Other maps are similar. It is assumed the game is played with 10 people and among them 2 impostors, the most common playstyle. For starters, a crewmate always gets assigned a set of three wires to do, these are unique to them, meaning no other crewmate will have wires in the same order as them. On “The Skeld” there are 6 locations where crewmates do their task, “fix wires”, these are: Electrical>Storage>Ad min>Navigation>Cafeteria>Securi ty. When selecting a set for a crewmate, the game picks three of the above and then they are ordered accordingly. This means that there are 20, 6 choose 3 namely, possible different sets of wires. Also notice that due to the priority scheme, Cafeteria and Security can never be the first wires in a set, Security and Electrical cannot be the second wires done and Electrical and Storage cannot be the wires done last. Interesting to note with this is that seeing somebody do the wires in Security or Electrical and afterwards hearing them say

they are done is impossible, since they at least have one more set of wires left. Also an interesting thing to do, look if somebody has similar wires to you, if they do the exact same wires they are also faking, their set has to be unique. The most interesting wires to speculate about are the ones that are first in the sequence, it is usually a good idea to ask people what wires they did first if it is a common tasks, due to the system this can’t ever be Cafeteria or Storage, but also Navigation only has 1 permutation where it is the first one and Admin only has 3 permutations where it is first. As impostor it is therefore easiest to say you did Electrical first, since there are at 10 different permutations possible, one for every crewmate and 2 extra the impostors can claim. Everyone claiming electrical means 2 people are lying, since they don’t have the task, but this pretty much only confirms there are impostors in the game. We can also calculate the probability of three people starting in navigations, even though possible, it is rather small. First we calculate the total ways of picking 7 permutations from the total of 19 of the leftover permutations (since we did not start in navigations). This comes out to be 19 choose 7, which is 50388. Then we assume three people did indeed get a permutation starting in navigations, then we know the rest has to get a permutation starting somewhere else. We get that there are 16 choose 4 possibilities leftover, which comes out to be 1820 possible combinations of permutations. So we get:

(This calculation assumes you did not start your wires in navigations.) So if three people say they had their first wires in navigations there is a high likelihood one of them is lying. Download and upload Download and upload is a task quite common among the crewmates,

a crewmate has to download a file somewhere on the ship (Cafeteria, Communications, Electrical, Navigation, or Weapons) and upload it in admin. Only a maximum of two people can download from the same place. Seeing more than two people do download in the same place means at least one of them has faked the task and an impostor is among them. Sadly seeing somebody do the same download task is not that rare. Since the total group of 10 possible locations to do download is not that large compared to the 8 selected locations. Even if we take into account that you already know your download and only 1 out of the 9 remaining options is the same, we still have 7 players who all are equally likely to get the download task. In the end it is a 7 in 9 probability, so very plausible. But do remember, 1 more person claiming the same download and it’s impossible. Conclusion Hopefully you have learned some new strategies from this article, giving you a slight edge over the competition and the impostors. Of course if you are an impostor you can use these tactics as well to avoid doing the tasks that will give you away. Let’s hope you will use them for good.

Review: Linea Recta Text: Eline Peeters When I moved to Enschede last year, it was time for me to find a sports association. After having done gymnastics for 10 years, I thought it would be time for change and try other sports. Let me tell you: I failed. Quite hard. I joined the gymnastics association Linea Recta very quickly and didn’t even look at other sports anymore. Now let me tell you why! Every week, you get the possibility to train up to 8 hours, in which you are free to go to any apparatus that you want. During the trainings you combine strength, balance, technique, and flexibility to learn all kinds of flips and twists. There’s always a very open atmosphere, and everyone likes to help each other and have a chat. Some gymnasts already have experience with the sport, but a big part of the members are complete beginners! Many guys initially only come for strength or calisthenics training, and eventually end up learning insane flips (and with bigger biceps of course).

tees, spontaneous parties, and most importantly student competitions. Five times a year, all student gymnastics associations come together to show off their (attempts at) gymnastics skills. It’s all very informal and many people dress up or really make an entertainment act out of their routines. Afterwards, there’s always a big party and many people stay to sleep in the hall to finish off the amazing day. Sadly, after half a year this adventure came to an end (because well, corona), so we took our air tumbling outside! We started quite seriously but after a while we turned our trainings into belly sliding sessions. I think that’s the best way to describe Linea Recta: starting seriously but ending up goofing around :).

Besides trainings, there are also many activities, drinks, commit-

Puzzle Text: Daan Pluister This is a series of puzzles where the first fills in clues for the second and et cetera. Mark every square in the first grid with the area of its containing region. Colour the second grid so that adjacent regions are never the same colour.

The gray squares in the third grid need to be lit up by placing light bulbs. A light illuminates its own square and all the squares in the same row or column unless blocked by black squares. Lights may not illuminate each other. Each numbered square must be orthogonally adjacent to exactly the given number of lights.

The last grid needs to be filled with a train track following one line from one light bulb to the other light bulb. A track may not cross or loop. The clues on the side indicate the number of track pieces.

About my bachelor assignment Text: Matthew Maat A fascinating phenomenon of mathematics is that a seemingly simple problem or definition can lead to a very complicated structure or a very hard mathematical problem. The same is true for a specific problem that appears somewhere in the final pages of a conference paper from the sixties. It describes the following conjecture (loosely translated): • Alice has baked a cake for her and Bob. It is a square cake (the unit square U), and Alice has put some raisins on top, of which one in the bottom left corner (we will call the raisins point set S). Bob will cut the cake, but he has to follow some rules: he can only take rectangular axis-aligned pieces for himself (set of rectangles R, which are anchored at the points of S), and all his pieces must have exactly one raisin, which must be at the lower left corner of each piece (and he cannot turn pieces). The conjecture states that Bob can always secure half of the cake for himself, independent of where Alice places the raisins. and it says it was proposed by a certain Allen Freedman. I can imagine he found this after playing around for a bit with small point sets, and for these sets you can find quite easily that even the ‘worst’ point sets, which is when the points of S are evenly spaced on the (0,0)-(1,1)-diagonal (you can try this for yourself if you like), is about 1/2. But proving that is not that easy.

ce, and some lower bounds were found, but it is still open.

As of today, 50 years later, there is still no proof that 1/2 of the unit square can always be covered. The problem has appeared in a couple of mathematical puzzle books sin-

Figure 1: Example of a step in the greedypacking algorithm. In this case, p5 is being treated, where p1, p2, p3, p4 have been treated before p5, hence they have an anchored rectangle already (grey rectangles). Anchored rectangles cannot intersect, but can touch other rectangles, so the anchored rectangle with the largest possible area at p5 will touch the grey rectangles. In this case, the blue rectangle has a larger area than the rectangles with dashed and dotted lines, so this will be the choice for the rectangle anchored at p5.

Now to my bachelor’s assignment: you may have guessed what it is about: anchored rectangle packings. I like working on hard mathematical problems, so this seemed like a nice challenge. Specifically, I researched greedy algorithms to find good (=large area) anchored rectangle packings. A greedy algorithm had been discovered before, it works as follows: the greedypacking algorithm is the following algorithm to find an anchored rectangle packing: treat the points of S in a specific order, and start with R empty. We denote an ordering by When a point is treated, find the maximum area rectangle anchored at that point, that is interior-disjoint with all other rectangles of R and all points of S, and add this to R (ties are decided arbitrarily). See Figure 1. When all points are treated, R is an anchored rectangle packing. This algorithm can be implemented

in time However, it has not been researched what ‘good’ orderings (= orderings that leave us with an anchored rectangle packing with a large area) of the points are in this algorithm, so this is what I looked into. First of all, there are a couple of simple assumptions that can be made about the order of the points: • We can assume that the points p for which there is no point q with $x_q>x_p and $y_q>y_p always come first in an ordering, and we can shuffle these points p in any way we like. • We can assume the origin comes last in the ordering. • If $x_p<x_ and $y_p<y_q for some $p,q\in , then q comes before p in the ordering. The first two assumptions are a nice exercise to prove that they don’t affect the best area that we can find, the last one is a bit more difficult and involves some earlier results from other papers. Now to the question: what is a ‘good’ ordering of the points? To

answer this question from a practical point of view, we can do some simulations for different ordering rules and see what works best on average. In the end, the ‘best’ ordering out of some twenty different candidate rules (for a uniform distribution of points) appeared to be to order the points p by their value of $x_p+y_, form high to low. But now you might wonder: can we prove something about how well this rule works? Yes, we can, and this is where it gets interesting. We can prove some things about the worst case performance of the rule. You might remember how at the start we found that putting all the points on the (0,0)-(1,1)-diagonal limits the maximal area of an anchored rectangle packing to about 1/2, so we already have an upper bound on what area we can cover in the worst case. There was already a lower bound found for what area is covered if we use this rule. It was shown with proof of many pages (so I am not showing it here) that at least 0.09121 is covered with the greedypacking algorithm with points sorted by $x_p+y_. The main idea of the proof is to divide the unit square into staircase-like shapes and prove that ‘most’ of the shapes can have a relatively large anchored rectangle in them. With two small adjustments, this can be improved to 0.09612, and this was maybe the most interesting find of my thesis. Finally, it is possible to show upper bounds for how well a rule performs compared to the optimum. Like in real life, being greedy is not necessarily optimal. To finish this article, I would like to show you one of these bounds which has a nice proof: Theorem 0.1. The worst case approximation ratio (=worst case/ optimum) for the greedypacking

algorithm with an ordering of the points p according to their value of min(x_p,y_p) from high to low, is at most 1/2. Proof. For a positive integer n and small enough real number we construct a finite set Define the point

half of Figure 2, we can cover a lot more area if we put the points pi before qi in our ordering, since then the rectangles don’t block each other. If $\epsilo and $n\to, then the optimal area approaches 1. So the worst case approximation ratio cannot exceed 1/2, since we found a sequence of counterexamples.

Let and for i=1,2,...,n. We will look at set See Figure 2. The set $S is shaped like a staircase going from the origin to (1,1), but the points are slightly shifted so that qi always comes before pi in the ordering that we are looking at. Also, the rectangles anchored at points qi protrude a little above points pi for all i, so the rectangles at pi can only be small and the upper left half of the unit square is almost empty. If we take the limit $\epsilo and then $n\to\inf, the area covered by the anchored rectangle packing resulting from the greedypacking algorithm with the $\min(x_p,y_-ordering approaches 1/2. But as we can see in the right

Figure 2: Left: part of the anchored rectangle packing from the ordering according to $\min(x_p for point set $S_{. We see the rectangle at qi ‘blocks’ the point pi. Right: part of the optimal anchored rectangle packing for $S_, almost the whole unit square is covered.

Interview: Pranab Mandal Text: Diana Dalenoord Pranab Mandal, the international programme director of Applied Mathematics with plans. How likely is it that a mathematician from India will become the Programme Director for Applied Mathematics at the University of Twente? Perhaps even greater than you think. Pranab Mandal was recently appointed as the Programme Director AM. He graduated in India in the field of Statistics & Probability, completed his PhD in the US and ended up in the Netherlands on his way back to India. Here he met his current partner - Nelly Litvak, also mathematician - and both are now working at our university. What makes the discipline of mathematics important? Pranab: “As a mathematician, you quickly learn to think analytically. Analytical thinking is in itself an abstract concept. By continuing to practise, you become an expert and you can go in all directions with it. However, to practice this, you need a concrete field of application. That area/discipline does not have to be mathematics. The advantage of applying analytical thinking to mathematics is that mathematics has many fixed rules, you can’t deviate much. As a result, you quickly learn to stay within the boundaries. And that’s what you learn with mathematical proofs”. “Analytical thinking is important in our Applied Mathematics department as well. Here, we place more emphasis on modelling a problem in society. To better understand the reality you make a model and analyse different scenarios. Based on this, you determine the best solution that comes closest to reality. Often the solutions you find are not applicable to just one problem but can be re-used to find solutions to other similar societal problems by making only minor adjustments to the model. So your systematic way

of thinking is worth its weight in gold,” says Pranab. How do you prepare students for societal challenges? “The world changes every day. The way a mathematician works also changes because the social problems that need to be solved are probably not the same every year. That is why it is nice that the methods (techniques) to arrive at the solution can be reused. The way of thinking remains the same, but the problems and therefore the challenges of the society change. Within the Applied Mathematics programme, we let students practise a great deal on this through the execution of different projects. It is, so to speak, a test phase for later when they go into society to tackle real problems. You learn a result, apply it and eureka, everything falls into place. Exercising project assignments is therefore very important. By continuing to practice this controlled way of learning, such as learning theory, understanding and applying it to assignments, you become better at it and you can apply what you have learned to various problems in society. That is why a mathematician is so valuable within science or an industry”. Explains Pranab. He continues: “To prepare students well for the future, they are given the most important components from each mathematical discipline and sometimes from other disciplines as well. By combining what they have learned, great results can be achieved. Of course, you go even deeper into the subject matter within the master’s programme. After all, here you will be trained to be an expert within a certain mathematical field, with a broad knowledge of the subject. Even as a BSc graduate, you are able to think analytically, have a systematic approach to tackle social challenges and can build good models to imitate reality and are therefore broadly deployable”.

What mathematical research are you engaged in? “My expertise lies in the research area of filter theory: how to filter out noise from data so that you can see a subject better. You always make sure that there is a balance between your model that matches reality and the analysis you do. Because you don’t always have all the data at your disposal to generate the perfect answer, you need to have a good balance between the data, your model and the analyses. But as an expert in my field, I cannot come to a solution on my own, I need other experts from other (mathematical) fields. There are always aspects you have to deal with that you can’t find yourself, those data are provided by colleagues. You are a cog in a big picture. By dividing problems into pieces, different mathematicians who are experts in different fields, such as discrete mathematics, numerical mathematics, systems theory or even disciplines outside mathematics, can work on the same problem. Based on a colleague’s results, the next mathematician can work further on the solution using his expertise on it. The point of view within mathematics is also often that you always work from your way of thinking within your research group. In other words, together – in a multidisciplinary way - you come to the best solution” according to Pranab.

Can you give an example of what filter theory is all about? Pranab: “Within the research into the operation of radars, which is done in collaboration with Thales, for example, we can put a filter between what is detected and what one ultimately sees. Noise is removed, you could say. Nowadays, many people have a security camera connected to their house. Such a camera is, of course, an expensive product, so you want to get the most out of it. Sensors detect movement, so it indicates if someone is walking in your garden. However, there is always a margin of error. By applying filter theory, you can enforce a more precise way of detecting and thus reduce the margin of error”. Why did you choose to become the programme director in addition to teaching and doing research? “In addition to teaching and doing mathematical research, I have also been a study advisor for the AM master’s programme. Thanks to this position, I have gained a better understanding of the university and its inner work. I have seen that participating in our university is seen as valuable. With the position of programme director, I want to create a better atmosphere both for the students (to learn) and for the lecturers (to teach excellently). For example, as Master’s coordinator AM, I had to submit documents for the EER (education and examination regulations). Because of the EER, students naturally have a handhold and know their rights. Everything is carried out following these rules. On the other hand, this influences being creative in teaching or disseminating the knowledge of lecturers. Education within the Applied Mathematics department is going well, what could I improve? The workload of lecturers has increased enormously in recent years due to the way education is organized at the University of Twente and in general, in the Netherlands. I would welcome the fact that more lecturers can be hired to be able to (re)

distribute the work, and therefore the workload, better. Of course, the work of a lecturer is not only about disseminating knowledge, but it also involves student guidance and sitting on committees such as the Committee on Quality of Education to guarantee the quality and the level of the education we offer. It must therefore also be possible to make time available for this. Also, the use of guest lectures by staff from companies, such as Thales, is good to consider. To some extent, this already happens, but could it perhaps be expanded? This is certainly a good way to stay connected to the industry. It also offers the students a glimpse into the kitchen of a scientist in the field” according to Pranab. What are the most important points of attention on which you want to focus as the programme director? Pranab: ‘I would like to look at the balance between mathematics content and projects. I have the feeling that the use of theoretical results and the recognition that they are applicable to different situations are not sufficiently practised. Understanding the theorems and the required conditions, and using them to come to a conclusion is a great asset. Perhaps more projects will be needed to practise this. But that would mean that fewer mathematics subjects could be included. How to find a proper balance between these two? Of course, every-

thing has to fit within the 3 years of the bachelor’s programme. I would like to improve this balance. I would also like to look at the workload of the lecturers, as I mentioned above. This is a point that I will really like to look at further. Of course, this will also benefit the students in the end”. Do you have any tips for your (future) mathematics students? “Mathematics prepares you for everything, doors will open for you. Thinking analytically becomes your second nature and offers you many opportunities in society. To make the study successful you must enjoy mathematics and enjoy the journey. Occasionally, you also need to take your mind off from mathematics. That’s why it is important that you participate in different (extracurricular) activities within the programme or UT. It also prepares you as a better person in society. There is time for it, but you have to keep a close eye on your priorities. You shouldn’t do this study (only) because it looks great on your Curriculum Vitae, you should do it - just like your other hobbies - because you enjoy it! And why shouldn’t you enjoy it, the life of a mathematician is wonderful,” Pranab laughs.

Interview: Abacus Committees Text: Timon Veurink and Lavinia Lanting

Ab-Actie Which different rolls are there in this committee? In this committee we have the roles: chairman, secretary, treasurer and posterboy. Each member is then responsible for the activity they organise and have then tasks such as writing a promotional message for the activity.

Introduce yourselves. Lavinia: Hello there! I’m Lavinia and I’m a third-year student and I’ve now been active for almost 3 years within this committee. I’m currently the chairman. Jorg: Hi, I’m Jorg. I’m a third-year student and I’ve now been active for a bit over 1 year at the Ab-Actie. I’m the secretary of the committee. Lars: Hey everyone! I am Lars, a third-year student and I have been active for almost two years for the Ab-Actie, which I have very much enjoyed. Currently I am the treasurer of this committee. Alex: Hi, I’m Alex, a second-year and a double student with Applied Physics. I have recently become the posterboy for the committee. Marion: Hi, I’m Marion, a secondyear student and I have recently joined the Ab-Actie. What does the committee do? The Ab-Actie organizes fun events for Abacus members, sometimes working alongside other committees or other associations. There’s a set number of events we organise per module, but as of lately we also organize fun ongoing activities that happen more frequently such as game tournaments or our casual Friday activities.

What kind of interests suit this committee? The interests that suit this committee are creativity, enthusiasm and a little bit of randomness. In addition, socializing with your fellow mathematics students, as well as just wanting to have fun! There’s obviously also a lot of planning, brainstorming and promoting that goes into organising activities, but, since we work as a group, everything always ends up working out and we always have tons of fun with each other. How much time do you spend on committee related matters? We meet once every two weeks for about 30 minutes and hold a brainstorming session for a few hours once per module. Aside from that you generally spend about 30 minutes per week organising an activity. This could be slightly less or slightly more depending on how big the activity you are organising is. It is the case that we choose together which activities we will organise and who organises what. In addition, if the workload is becoming too much or you are suddenly very busy, you can always ask for help within the committee.

What is the weirdest/most fun thing that has happened within this committee? Lars: The most fun thing, or things I should say, are the cakes!! Ever time when someone forgets something or does anything wrong for three times and when someone leaves our committee, that someone has to bring cake! That is always a great start of a meeting if I may say so. One time we got lovely frozen tompouces and no one really could eat them since they were so freaking cold. Lavinia: Our brainstorm sessions are also always really fun: they are the literal definition of ‘there are no wrong ideas‘. Anything that comes to mind we write down and we even try to have serious conversations about why an activity such as ‘The Chairmen Fight Club‘ would be amazing and totally doable. Why should I join this committee? Because it’s fun! You get to meet a lot of people and get be an active part of what makes Abacus fun. In addition, if you like the activities organised by the Ab-Actie and want to have an impact on what is organised and how, this is the commmittee for you! If you are as enthusiastic about this committe as we are or even just curious and would like to participate in a meeting to get a feel for what we do and how we do it, don’t hesitate and send an e-mail to ab-actie@abacus.utwente.nl or contact any of the committee members.

Ideaal! ings now we were planning on eating all together and then going ice skating. Since both times we all cooked in pairs to ensure we had a full course meal, we ended up being done with dinner very late. Long story short, we never went ice skating and instead learnt a lot about Kosovo. Lavinia also once worked for about 3 hours at the Starbucks in Educafé to write a piece, because of which we were offered a free coffee tasting with different special types of coffee and cakes and chocolate to go along.

Introduce yourselves. Lavinia: Hello there! I’m Lavinia and I’m a third-year student and I’ve now been active for almost 3 years within this committee. I’m currently the chairman. Jorg: Hi, I’m Jorg. I’m a third-year student and I’ve now been active for a bit over 1 year for the Ideaal!. I’m the secretary of the committee. Emma: Hey everyone! I am Emma. I’ve been part of this committee since my first year and I’m part of the lay-out team. Timon: Hi, I’m Timon and I’ve now been a member for this committee for quite a while. Daan: I am Daan van Kats, a second-years student and I live in Enschede during the week. I joined the Ideaal! committee not too long ago. What does the committee do? We make sure that our association magazine, the Ideaal!, which comes out 5 times a year, is full with articles, interviews, photos and other pieces, even mathematical ones. We write pieces ourselves, ask other members/teachers to write something, collect and check the articles, and at the end take care of the lay-out through InDesign. What kind of interests suit this committee? If you like writing and reading, solving or creating puzzles and our

wonderful association Abacus, you’re in the right corner of interest! In addition, if you like creating something you are proud of while cooperating with a friendly team and the entirety of AM, this is the committee for you! How much time do you spend on committee related matters? We meet once every weeks for about 30 minutes (45 minutes if we need to devide the tasks for the next edition). Aside from that, you usually will spend about 30 minutes per week looking for people who would llike to write a specific piece or writing a certain piece yourself. If you join the lay-out team, you will also have to spend a few hours working in InDesign on the lay-out about 2 weeks before that particular edition of the Ideaal! is supposed to be published. Which different rolls are there in this committee? In this committee we have the roles: chairman and secretary. Each member is then responsible for the pieces they get assigned and a few of us form the lay-out team, meaning they ensure that the Ideaal! looks pretty and professional. What is the weirdest/most fun thing that has happened within this committee? For the past two committee out-

Why should I join this committee? You should definitely join if you want to add your input to the magazine by adding pieces that peak your interest, making intriguing puzzles and getting to know all the people linked to Applied Mathematics. In addition, you would be working with a great group of people who genuinely enjoy working together to create a magazine that links everyone within AM and Abacus. If you are as enthusiastic about this committe as we are or even just curious and would like to participate in a meeting to get a feel for what we do and how we do it, don’t hesitate and send an e-mail to ideaal@ abacus.utwente.nl or contact any of the committee members.

Education Committee What is the weirdest/most fun thing that has happened within this committee? Usually not many weird things happen during our activities. A crazy surprise we once encountered was during the abacus-arithmetic training. The person who was supposed to guide us through the activity could last minute not speak English. We then all of a sudden had to, very amateuristically, function as interpreters for Ginnie.

Introduce yourselves. Erik: Hey everyone! I’m Erik. I’m a third-year student, a double student with Applied Physics and the current chairman of the Education Committee. Lavinia: Hello there! I’m Lavinia and I’m a third-year student and I’ve recently joined and I’m the secretary of the committee. Thomas: Hi, I’m Thomas, a secondyear. I too joined recently and I’m the treasurer of the committee. Bram: I’m Bram. I’m a first-year student and the newest member of the committee. What does the committee do? The education committee primarily organises the more serious activities for which we often invite a staff member to speak to us (Mathematical Lounge) or to interview (Researcher Researched). Apart from that, we have an activity with a little more freedom each quartile, like the activity with the Ab-Actie and in the Education Week. What kind of interests suit this committee? You should be interested in organising activities where you also learn something or in helping the professors and teachers at the university to come incontact with students

through the committee. Half the members of the current committee are also huge chess fans. Those are the kind of interests you will often see applying to members of this committee. How much time do you spend on committee related matters? The committee usually meets once a week in the break. Next tot that you should work on committee related matters for about an hour a week. This can vary a bit when an activity gets close, like the one with the Ab-Actie: then you need to spent a bit more time. Thankfully, we are with enough people to help eachother out, if needed. The Education Week, in quartile 3, is for us pretty much the only really busy period.

Why should I join this committee? You get a super cool blouse and you have nice encounters with teachers who you wouldn’t see so much otherwise. We are next to that not super formal and the meetings are pretty fun. If you are looking for a committee with a low threshold who continues through the entire year and which organises a bit more serious and study-related activities, you are the one for us! If you are as enthusiastic about this committe as we are or even just curious and would like to participate in a meeting to get a feel for what we do and how we do it, don’t hesitate and send an e-mail to educationcommittee@abacus.utwente. nl or contact any of the committee members.

Which different rolls are there in this committee? In the comittee we have 3 standard functions: the chairman, the treasurer and the secretary. To continue, we are not a very formal committee, so people who have the ambition to get an alternative role (such as adding memes to the minutes or making posters) can get those.

The never-ending learning journey Nontas Rontogiannis has the rather narrow sounding job title of Software Architect within the Software Innovation Team at ASML. But what Nontas loves about his job is how wide it really is – the freedom it gives him to be creative, to be challenged and to learn and grow. Nontas: “I was always a curious child – always asking questions, wanting to know how everything worked, especially technology. It was natural then that I went on to study Electrical & Computer Engineering.” When you meet Nontas, you see immediately how energetic he is. Collaborating more, learning more and getting more hands-on with people and industry is in his nature. In 2015, he came to the Netherlands for a PDEng in Software Technology at the Eindhoven University of Technology. His graduation project was at ASML, and his experience there was enough for him to eagerly take up a full-time post in 2017.

A technical university in a box “My primary motivation for choosing ASML is the machines we make. For a curious person like me, an ASML TWINSCAN system is like a technical university in a box! Every possible engineering discipline is inside – cutting-edge physics, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, software…you name it,” says Nontas. “And you can explore them all – you not only get to

push the boundaries together.”

work alongside other disciplines; you have the opportunity to move around and develop yourself wherever you want to go.” Maintaining a code base of more than fifty million lines of code “Well, I don’t have to dress head to toe in a cleanroom suit,” laughs Nontas. “Depending on the day, I start by getting together with my colleagues to discuss the latest challenges on modelling software using state machines. It is important to align and engage with different engineering communities within ASML, like the one here at the Veldhoven headquarters and in Wilton and San Diego in the US. We use mathematics to prove certain properties of our software and create architectural patterns that not only enable us to get the most out of the machines, but also ensure that the codebase of more than fifty million lines of code is maintainable. To achieve all this, often we have to join forces with academia. Every week is different, you never stand still, and what’s great is the culture of open collaboration – no idea is off-limits. Everyone is here to learn from each other in order to

Programs to invest in technical talent Nontas enjoys that his learning journey never stops, and he makes the most of extra opportunities. He follows, among others, the ASML Technical Talent Program – a twoyear program providing an all-round technical and non-technical lithography domain training. “This program shows how ASML invests in its technical talent. It inspires me to give back too,” he says. As such, he volunteered to become a mentor to

future talent as part of the student ASML Technology Scholarship: “To me, the more you put in, the more you get out. And the more I learn, the more I can teach others.” Some final advice from Nontas? “Dare to dream big!” he says. “Don’t settle for OK, when you can do better. And ASML is definitely one of those places that dares you to dream big and where you can always be better. Your career options are only limited by your ambitions.” Are you interested to learn more about ASML? Visit www.asml.com/ students for more information about our events, internships and scholarship program.