Santa Barbara Math Ellipse

A circle is a special case of an ellipse. Ellipses have a property called eccentricity, which measures how elongated they are. The eccentricity is always a positive number between zero and one, except that perfect circles have an eccentricity of zero. (Our logo above has an eccentricity of 0.8855, whereas the eccentricity of the earth's orbit around the sun is 0.0017.) So a Math Ellipse is an eccentric Math Circle. Since Santa Barbarians tend to be somewhat eccentric, we thought it would be appropriate to call our Math Circle a Math Ellipse. If you don't know what an ellipse is or what eccentricity is, don't worry – you'll learn all that and more at the first meeting.