ESP Biography



YOA CLIFTON, ESP Teacher




Major: Mathematics

College/Employer: MIT

Year of Graduation: 2017

Picture of Yoa Clifton

Brief Biographical Sketch:

Not Available.



Past Classes

  (Clicking a class title will bring you to the course's section of the corresponding course catalog)

X11209: MLB: The Offseason 2016-17 in Spark 2017 (Mar. 11 - 12, 2017)
Are you a baseball fan? Did your team make stupid moves this past offseason? Come to this class to be on a panel of middle school students discussing major offseason moves and perhaps predictions on the MLB season of 2017. This will be a light discussion and will not involve complicated math and statistics but be ready to argue with classmates!


M11421: Fun with Invariants! in Spark 2017 (Mar. 11 - 12, 2017)
An invariant is a quantity that remains unchanged throughout a repeated process. Let's see how we can use them to solve some cool problems!


M11422: Fun with Pigeonhole Principle in Spark 2017 (Mar. 11 - 12, 2017)
If you have n holes containing, kn+1 pigeons, then you must have at least one hole with at least k+1 pigeons. So what? We will show how to apply this seemingly simple statement to a plethora of exciting problems.


X11424: Let's Talk About the NBA in Spark 2017 (Mar. 11 - 12, 2017)
KD on the Warriors. The rise of Embiid, Antetokounmpo, and Jokic. Russell Westbrook's never-ending train of triple-doubles (not to forget James Harden!). Come discuss storylines from this year's NBA season, predictions, statistics, issues like tanking, or maybe all-time greats. You'll get to shape the discussion based on what topics interest you most.


X10560: Intentional Talk in Splash 2016 (Nov. 19 - 20, 2016)
Come interact with other enthusiastic baseball nerds about the MLB 2016-17 season, playoffs, offseason, and sabermetrics! Don't know what the last word means? We can talk about that too! Yes, the name of this class is ripped off the MLB Network TV show.


M11052: Fun With Group Theory! in Splash 2016 (Nov. 19 - 20, 2016)
What can you do with just one operation (multiplication) ? Apparently, a whole lot! Come be amazed by groups and group actions. We will build from the ground up and work towards proving the Sylow theorems and Burnside's lemma!


M11053: Fun with Ramsey Theory! in Splash 2016 (Nov. 19 - 20, 2016)
In the 1950s, a Hungarian sociologist noticed that in every set of around twenty children, there were four who were all friends, or four none of whom were friends. Had he just discovered a remarkable property of human interactions? No! Enter Ramsey theory which explores results about some partition of a set maintaining the property of the whole. How big of a complete graph do we need for any partition of its edges into two "colors" to contain a monochromatic k-clique? What's the smallest n such that any way of splitting the numbers 1,2,...,n into two disjoint sets guarantees that one of your two sets contains an arithmetic progression of length 4? Explore the answers to these and other fun questions! I'll even provide some open problems for you to think about afterward.


M11054: Fun With Integer Partitions! in Splash 2016 (Nov. 19 - 20, 2016)
5 can be written as 5, 4+1, 3+2, 3+1+1, 2+2+1, 2+1+1+1, and 1+1+1+1+1. Why is this cool? Why did legendary mathematicians like Ramanujan care about stuff like this? We'll explore many types of partitions, learn about Young Tableaux and Generating Functions, practice finding bijections and then prove some machinery to automatically generate correspondences between different types of partitions.


M11056: Some Things Never Change in Splash 2016 (Nov. 19 - 20, 2016)
An invariant is some property that does not change throughout a process. Let's find some invariants which help us solve cool math problems!


S11057: Boron in Splash 2016 (Nov. 19 - 20, 2016)
Come explore the exciting world of the 5th element!


M10436: Fun with Pigeonhole Principle in Spark 2016 (Mar. 12 - 13, 2016)
If you have n holes containing, kn+1 pigeons, then you must have at least one hole with at least k+1 pigeons. So what? We will show how to apply this seemingly simple statement to a plethora of exciting problems.


M10457: Fun with Invariants! in Spark 2016 (Mar. 12 - 13, 2016)
An invariant is a quantity that remains unchanged throughout a repeated process. Let's see how we can use them to solve some cool problems!


M9971: Fun with Ramsey Theory! in Splash 2015 (Nov. 21 - 22, 2015)
In the 1950s, a Hungarian sociologist noticed that in every set of around twenty children, there were four who were all friends, or four none of whom were friends. Had he just discovered a remarkable property of human interactions? No! Enter Ramsey theory which explores results about some partition of a set maintaining the property of the whole. How big of a complete graph do we need for any partition of its edges into two "colors" to contain a monochromatic k-clique? What's the smallest n such that any way of splitting the numbers 1,2,...,n into two disjoint sets guarantees that one of your two sets contains an arithmetic progression of length 4? Explore the answers to these and other fun questions! I'll even provide some open problems for you to think about afterward.


P9972: Let's Talk about the NBA in Splash 2015 (Nov. 21 - 22, 2015)
How do you build the best possible NBA team? While we probably won't figure this out (a student last year had an idea and then realized with horror that the 2012-2013 Lakers had already used said idea and gone 45-37 before being swept out of the playoffs), we will get to discuss many topics including the necessity of a Big Three, the ethics of tanking, the Wiggins-Love trade one year later, and possible playoff retooling. Feel free to bring your own discussion topics!


M9349: Fun with Pigeonhole Principle in Spark 2015 (Mar. 14 - 15, 2015)
Are you interested in math? Do you want to stick pigeons in holes? If you answered yes to either of these questions, come and learn how a seemingly trivial statement can have powerful consequences!


X9350: Let's talk about the NBA! in Spark 2015 (Mar. 14 - 15, 2015)
The Warriors winning 50 games, firing their coach and then winning, well a lot more games. Hassan Whiteside coming up big in Miami. The Pistons potentially making a playoff run? OKC struggling to get it together. And since when were the Hawks SO good? Come and share your thoughts about the current NBA season and we'll also talk about some other topics like big threes, tanking, and one and dones.


M8778: Fun With Integer Partitions! in Splash 2014 (Nov. 22 - 23, 2014)
5 can be written as 5, 4+1, 3+2, 3+1+1, 2+2+1, 2+1+1+1, and 1+1+1+1+1. Why is this cool? Why did legendary mathematicians like Ramanujan care about stuff like this? We'll explore many types of partitions, learn about Young Tableaux and Generating Functions, practice finding bijections and then prove some machinery to automatically generate correspondences between different types of partitions.


M9016: Fun With Group Theory! in Splash 2014 (Nov. 22 - 23, 2014)
What can you do with just one operation (multiplication) ? Apparently, a whole lot! Come be amazed by groups and group actions. We will build from the ground up and work towards proving the Sylow theorems and Burnside's lemma!


X9038: NBA Big Threes in Splash 2014 (Nov. 22 - 23, 2014)
Jordan, Pippen, and Rodman. Pierce, Allen, and KG. Lebron, D-Wade, and Bosh. Duncan, Parker, and Manu. Harden, Howard, and ... oh wait...never mind. Many people believe that having a "Big Three" is necessary to contend for the NBA title. We'll discuss the trade-offs between building a top-heavy team versus one with a deeper roster, the necessity of having a third star, and whether the player-centric nature of the NBA makes the league better or worse. We'll also have time to discuss the storylines of the fledgeling season and make predictions.


M8483: Math Lecture Series! in HSSP Summer 2014 (Jul. 06, 2014)
Want to learn how to keep secrets from your little sister or a well-funded intelligence agency? Why 19 is a happy number, but 20 isn't? How to count to infinity, and then some? Then sign up for this whirlwind tour of math! You'll learn about something completely different each week from a series of 7 speakers. The exact list of topics is TBD and may depend on class interests.


M8484: Math Lecture Series! in HSSP Summer 2014 (Jul. 06, 2014)
Want to learn how to keep secrets from your little sister or a well-funded intelligence agency? Why 19 is a happy number, but 20 isn't? How to count to infinity, and then some? Then sign up for this whirlwind tour of math! You'll learn about something completely different each week from a series of 7 speakers. The exact list of topics is TBD and may depend on class interests.


S8485: Research Lecture Series! in HSSP Summer 2014 (Jul. 06, 2014)
Learn about current developments across math, science, and computing! Every week, a different guest speaker will talk about their current research. Find out some of the cool things that MIT students spend their time working on.


M8288: Fun with Pigeonhole Principle in Spark 2014 (Mar. 15 - 16, 2014)
Are you interested in math? Do you want to stick pigeons in holes? If you answered yes to either of these questions, come and learn how a seemingly trivial statement can have powerful consequences!


M7742: Fun with Group Theory in Splash! 2013 (Nov. 23 - 24, 2013)
Ever wonder how Cee Lo Green chose his stage name? Well, prepare to be amazed by the Sylow theorems! Background in Group Theory is not required since we will be building up the theory before heading to the main results.