This dog knows some smart tricks.

Tim Pennings, a math teacher at Hope College in Michigan, has a Welsh corgi that can do calculus. Pennings discovered this when he threw a tennis ball into Lake Michigan, and saw how his corgi Elvis would run a distance along the beach before jumping into the water to retrieve the ball.

Testing his theory that the dog was calculating the best spot to enter the water so he could retrieve the ball in the quickest time possible, he measured where Elvis jumped in with variations in ball toss distances and found that each time, the dog chose the best entry point that a calculus solution would identify.

Pennings wrote about his findings in The College Mathematics Journal.

Elvis became a star.

Then Roland Minton, a professor of math, physics and computer science at Roanoke College in Salem, read the article and was intrigued.

Minton used the experiment as a problem for his calculus textbook and soon formed a friendship with Pennings. Together they collaborated on another article, "Do Dogs Know Burifications?," combining Minton's ideas with Pennings' findings.

The new article, indicating that Elvis may in fact have the ability to problem-solve, was published in The College Mathematics Journal a year later. The two received the George Polya Award for their work from the Mathematics Association of America.

Hope College gave Elvis an honorary degree. Now here's your chance to see Elvis, live.

-- Heather Brush

CHECK IT OUT

What: Tim Pennings and Elvis will be giving a talk and demonstration

Where: Bast Center, Roanoke College

When: 7 p.m. Monday

How much: Free

Contact: 375-2500