The College Mathematics Journal is an international, peer-reviewed journal publishing high-quality exposition on mathematical topics related to the undergraduate curriculum.
Director of Data Nexus and Professor of Mathematics Crista Arangala, Stephen Bailey ’24, and Associate Professor of Mathematics and Statistics Kristen Mazur publish a peer-reviewed article titled “Winning Lights Out with Fibonacci” in The College Mathematics Journals.
The article explores the mathematics of the game Lights Out. Classically, Lights Out is an electronic handheld game featuring a 5 by 5 grid of light-up buttons. The game begins with a mix of lights turned on and off, and the goal is to turn them all off. Pressing a button changes its state and the state of its four adjacent cardinal neighbors. In the article, Arangala, Bailey and Mazur analyze a variation of game in which the right side of the board connects to the left and the lights to have multiple levels of brightness instead of just on and off. They develop a connection to the well-known mathematical sequence, the Fibonacci sequence, that allows them to determine when it is possible to use a simple strategy to turn off lights.
The College Mathematics Journal is an international, peer-reviewed journal publishing high-quality exposition on mathematical topics related to the undergraduate curriculum. It features articles that explore new or innovative perspectives on both new and existing mathematics, most of which are accessible to upper-level undergraduates. The journal is a publication of the Mathematical Association of America.