BRILLIANCE BY THE NUMBERS

WINNER SEES REAL BEAUTY IN

MATH` - PUZZLES OR PROBLEMS

Wednesday, March 6, 1991

Section: METRO

Page: 1B

By KEVIN O`BRIEN, Staff Writer

Illustration: PHOTO

Caption: Associated Press: Winners: Ashley Reiter of

Charlotte (center)

was announced the winner of the Westinghouse Science Talent

Search on Monday in Washington. She is seen here with second place

Winner Denis Lazarev of Fair Lawn, N.J., (left) and third place winner

William Ching of New York City.

The car trip was lengthy, so Harold Reiter, like most parents,

gave his 5- year-old daughter Ashley a simple riddle to keep

occupied.

``Imagine a grid of five vertical lines and five horizontal lines.

Now tell me, Ashley, how many squares can you make? And

how many rectangles?`` Reiter would ask.

Paper was taboo, so Ashley would sit quietly, picturing the

puzzle in her mind.

Eventually, she would come up with an answer - the right

answer.

Twelve years later, Ashley Reiter of Charlotte is still giving

the right answers.

On Monday, 17-year-old Ashley won a national science

competition for her study of multidimensional, theoretical objects called

``fractals.``

Today, she will try to explain them to Bryant Gumbel on

NBC`s ``Today`` show.

``A lot of people think math is sterile, but it`s really not,`` she

said Tuesday from her hotel room in New York City. ``It`s the

creativity of it that I like. There`s a real beauty in math, if you

know how to find it and where to look for it.``

She knew where to look. In the second grade, she was tackling

fifth-grade math problems. By age 13, she was taking calculus at UNC

Charlotte.

Her home environment was perfect for a math prodigy: Her

father is a math professor at UNC Charlotte and her mother, Betty, is a math

instructor at Winthrop College.

``It was a very big part of our lives,`` Ashley said.

But two years ago, math was far from a consuming passion.

``I wanted to be anything but a mathematics professor,`` she

said.

Ashley, then a student at Charlotte Latin School, said she

feared losing her identity. She thought of being a nutritional chemist. She

thought of many things.

That was before she started attending the N.C. School of

Science and Mathematics in Durham. Surrounded by children with similar

ability rekindled her interest in math and science.

Last spring, she scored 1580 in the SAT college entrance

exam, including a perfect 800 in the math section. That summer, she made the

National Chemistry Team.

She was a natural to be statistician for the volleyball team and

scorekeeper for the junior varsity football team at Charlotte Latin.

In some ways, Ashley is like many 17-year-olds. She likes pizza. Ice cream

and a movie is her idea of a good time. Croquet and needlepoint are hobbies.

``Think of any superlative and that`s Ashley,`` said Betty Lynn

Lambert of Charlotte, the leader of Ashley`s Girl Scout troop.

``I really had a normal upbringing,`` Ashley said. ``It was just

that math was a large part of our lives.``

Her latest achievement Monday: first prize in the Westinghouse

Science Talent Search. Ashley received a $40,000 scholarship she

hopes to apply to a degree at Rice University, when she graduates from high

school in June.

Her new career goal: ``I want to be a mathematics professor at

Some university.``

and may not be republished without permission.

CHARLOTTE

OBSERVER

TEEN WINS NATIONAL SCIENCE

HONOR

SHE`S ECSTATIC, BUT REAL JOY`

WAS IN DISCOVERING

MATHEMATICAL

PATTERN

Friday, January 25, 1991

Section: METRO

Page: 2D

By GARY L. WRIGHT, Staff Writer

Memo: This story also appeared in 1 on 1d and in 5 on 6d

Illustration: PHOTO

Caption: Ashley

Ask Ashley Reiter to explain her prize-winning science

project, and she

seems to be talking another language.

``When numbers with certain divisibility properties are

examined, fractal

patterns are formed which are self-similar,`` explains Ashley,

17. ``Looking

at the patterns formed by these groups of numbers, I determined

the dimension of their set. I was able to determine that there are

multidimensional analogs to these original triangular patterns.

``The same mathematical methods used to characterize these

theoretical

patterns are also used to study, among other things, fluctuations

in weather

patterns and stock market prices.``

Understand?

The judges for the 50th annual Westinghouse Science Talent

Search did.

Ashley, a Charlottean who is a senior at the N.C. School of

Science and

Mathematics in Durham, is one of 40 national winners in the

oldest nationwide high school science scholarship competition.

Next month, she and the other winners will travel to

Washington, where a

panel of eight scientists will interview them to evaluate their

scientific

creativity. Ten top scholarship winners will be selected. First

prize is a

$40,000 scholarship.

Ashley learned Tuesday that she`s a finalist for her project,

called

``Determining The Dimension Of Fractals Generated By

Pascal`s Triangle.``

``I was ecstatic,`` she said Thursday. ``The real joy of the

project came

from discovering it - knowing that I figured out something that

nobody else

has. It was nice to know that somebody else thought that my

work was important too. That sort of made it all worthwhile.``

She was one of 300 semifinalists among the 1,573 students,

from 686

schools, who entered research projects.

The other semifinalists from the Carolinas are:

Scott Edward Harrington of Charlotte; Preston Todd Snee of

Asheville;

Matthew Taylor Hinshaw of Burlington; Brian Candler

Davison of Rock Hill;

Margaret Chin-Chin Lin of Columbia; Joseph Solomon Hall of

Greenville, S.C.;

Matthew Roy Campbell of Spartanburg and Gavin Young

McDaniel of Spartanburg.

This isn`t the first time Ashley has won an award.

In 1987, Ashley, then 13 and an eighth-grader at Charlotte Latin

School,

became the first girl to win a medal in the national Mathcounts

Competition in Washington. She won a third-place bronze

medal in the competition sponsored by the National

Professional Society of Engineers.

Math talent runs in the family.

Ashley`s father, Harold Reiter, is a mathematics professor at

UNC

Charlotte. Her mother, Betty, is a math instructor at Winthrop

College.

On Thursday, Ashley said she hopes to become - you guessed it

- a math

researcher and teacher.

``That`s what I love to do.``

and may not be republished without permission.