MAA T-Shirt Design Contest Winner

Mathematician Edward Early of St. Edwards University created the winning design in this year’s MAA T-shirt contest. His design (pictured) shows a continuous vector field on a sphere with both stable and unstable critical points, characterizing a book that rotates smoothly around its short and long axes but wobbles around its middle axis. Arranged in a circle without punctuation, the phrase “the more you learn the more you realize you don’t understand” has a quirky ambiguity.

Look for T-shirts bearing the new design for sale at MAA MathFest 2011. Thanks to everyone who voted!