Double Bell

University of Wisconsin - Madison
Undergraduate Math Club
2012-2013

Mondays
9th floor
Van Vleck
480 Lincoln Drive
mathclub@math.wisc.edu

UW Math Department
Interesting sites
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The Math Pages
Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences
Wolfram's MathWorld
Terry Tao's blog
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GIMPS
Seventeen or Bust
Site Map

Home


Fall 2003
2004-2005
2006-2007
2008-2010
2010-2011
2011-2012
2012-2013 Math Club Officers
Ningyuan Chen
Jisu Cao


Faculty Organizers:
Dima Arinkin
Melanie Matchett Wood
Brian Street
Benedek Valko

To join the UMC mailing list send an email to mathclublist-request with subject "subscribe" and reply to the confirmation email.

Room Announcement: Van Vleck 901 unless otherwise noted.




April 29, 2013
The Geometry of Molecules

Speaker: Julie Mitchell

Abstract All of us have grown up doing puzzles. But, did you know that your body works by matching the geometries of molecules? For example, this is how you become immune to a disease. Your immune system works to create a shape that is a match to the invader.

I will talk about how mathematics can be used to understand molecular geometry, and how understanding this geometry can be used to design new cancer drugs and other useful molecules. Along the way, you will learn what a gene really is and why mutations in our genes can cause diseases.

I will try to describe everything in basic, intuitive terms and hope that anyone with an interest in math and science will enjoy the lecture.

Free Pizza will be served.


When: Monday, April 29, 4:35 p.m.
Where: Room 901 Van Vleck.



April 22, 2013
Non-standard analysis and hyperreal numbers

Speaker: Uri Andrews

Abstract Newton and Leibniz invented calculus using infinitesimals: positive numbers smaller than every positive real number. The math-world had come to reject the idea of infinitesimals on the (silly) grounds that no positive real number is smaller than every positive real number. We'll talk about how to fix that pesky problem and use infinitesimals to give a different approach to analysis.
Free Pizza will be served.


When: Monday, April 22, 4:35 p.m.
Where: Room 901 Van Vleck.





April 11, 2013
Capital One Financial, Information Based Strategy

Speakers: Andrew Van Ryzin and Ryan Paavola

Abstract Today, Capital One is the 6th largest bank in the United States, with one of the most recognizable brands in the world. Unlike many of its peers however, it was founded only 25 years ago as the credit card arm of a small Virginia Bank. Capital One has experienced this unprecedented growth due its use of Information Based Strategy where large amounts of customer data is used to tailor products and drive business decision making. This strategy is totally dependent on the intellect of our analysts and their ability to solve complex problems using their mathematical and data analysis skills.

In our info session we’d like to tell you what it’s like to work at Capital One, how we got where we are today and what it takes to get a job here. We’ll also be covering some aspects of interviewing at finance and consulting companies as well as answering any questions you have about the work world after college.
Free Pizza will be served.


When: Thursday, April 11, 4:35 p.m.
Where: Room 139 Van Vleck.





March 15, 2013
Board game night


The Math Club organizers invite you to a board game night!

Cookies and pop will be served.


When: Friday, March 15, 4-6 p.m.
Where: Helen C. White 7115.



March 11, 2013
Murphy's Law in Algebraic Geometry
(after Ravi Vakil)

Speaker: Dima Arinkin

Abstract (or see the poster): Algebraic geometry is the flavor of geometry based on polynomial functions, similar to how topology is based on continuous functions and differential geometry is based on differentiable functions. This makes algebraic geometry both easier and harder than other `geometries': on the one hand, polynomials are very well behaved and easy to work with, but on the other, there are sometimes just too few of them for comfort.
Murphy's Law states that anything that can go wrong will. Ravi Vakil discovered a beautiful instance of this philosophical principle in algebraic geometry. It concerns the so-called `moduli spaces', which parametrize mathematical objects (say, lines on a plane). Vakil's Theorem states that these moduli spaces can be arbitrarily bad: anything imaginable will occur.
I will start my talk with a quick introduction to algebraic geometry and show the features that distinguish it from other flavors of geometry. I will then explain the idea of a moduli space and show the key example that Vakil's theorem applies to. The example is surprisingly classical (it concerns patterns of lines on a plane), and the proof of Vakil's theorem is based on geometric ideas that are more than two thousand years old.

Free Pizza will be served.


When: Monday, March 11, 4:35 p.m.
Where: Room 901 Van Vleck.

February 18, 2013
Dropping Lowest Grades

Speaker: Jonathan Kane

Abstract (or see the poster): Some teachers will drop one or more grades earned during a course in order to help raise students' grades. In this talk we consider the problem of finding the best r grades to drop from a collection of k grades. Many examples will be given showing that when the k grades are not all worth the same number of points, the optimal solution can be non-intuitive and tricky to identify. Many of our natural assumptions about how to find the best solution prove to be wrong. A brute-force algorithm for finding the best grades to drop would be to calculate the average grade for each subset of k - r grades of the k grades. This algorithm is inefficient and impractical to use. The talk will include a very efficient algorithm which works well in practice.
Prof. Kane will also give a short introduction about the Purple Comet! Math Meet. This is a free, annual, international, online, team, mathematics competition designed for middle and high school students run from the web site http://purplecomet.org. The 2013 contest runs from the evening of Monday April 16 through the evening of Thursday April 26. To keep the contest running smoothly the organizers will hire mathematics students to monitor the helpline during the entire eleven days of the contest, 24/7. Come and find out how you can help, earn money, and sign up for what hours you would like to work.

Free Pizza will be served.

When: Monday, February 18, 4:35 p.m.
Where: Room 901 Van Vleck.



February 11, 2013
The UW-Stout REU

Speaker: Keith Wojhiechowski

Abstract: click here.

Free Pizza will be served.

When: Monday, February 11, 4:35 p.m.
Where: Room 901 Van Vleck.




December 3, 2012
Randomness, Well-posedness and Bertrand’s Paradox

Speaker: Mihai Stoiciu

Abstract: We will discuss Bertrand’s Paradox, a famous problem in probability. The question is the following: what is the probability that a random chord in a given circle is longer than the side of the equilateral triangle inscribed in the circle? Since the problem is not well-posed, we can find at least five "correct" answers to this question. We will present these different approaches and discuss the concepts of randomness and well-posedness.

Free Pizza will be served.

When: Monday, December 3, 4:35 p.m.
Where: Room 901 Van Vleck.




November 12, 2012
Groups as geometric objects

Speaker: Tullia Dymarz

Abstract: A finitely generated group can be treated as a geometric object through its Cayley graph. Cayley graphs however depend on a chosen generating set. We will talk about how to resolve this problem and then we will give examples of how geometric and algebraic properties of a group are intertwined.

Free Pizza will be served.

When: Monday, November 12, 4:35 p.m.
Where: Room 901 Van Vleck.





October 29, 2012
What is Fourier Analysis?

Speaker: Patrick LaVictoire

Abstract:  Why do MP3s sound almost, but not quite, like music from vinyl? How do JPEGs shrink the file size without the human eye noticing, and when the file gets too small, why do we get those recognizable blocky artifacts instead of just pixelation or blurring? How did we actually derive the solutions to lots of differential equations, like linear constant-coefficient ordinary differential equations or the heat equation? The answers to all of these questions depend on different forms of what's called Fourier analysis; in this talk, we'll introduce the subject on a practical level and show off some of its most famous applications (with pictures). Anyone who's familiar with calculus and Euler's Rule can follow most of this talk, and even those who've taken some Fourier analysis will learn something new!

Free Pizza will be served.

When: Monday, October 29, 4:35 p.m.
Where: Room 901 Van Vleck.




October 15, 2012
Matrices that commute with their derivative

Speaker: Hans Schneider

Abstract: We display a facsimile of a letter that Issai Schur wrote to Helmut Wielandt. The subject matter concerns matrices of functions that commute with their elementwise derivative. We discuss the contents of Schur's letter and we add some results of our own. The talk is based on a paper with co-authors Olga Holtz and Volker Mehrmann.

Free Pizza will be served.

When: Monday, October 15, 4:45 p.m.
Where: Room 901 Van Vleck.






October 1, 2012
Elliptic Curves and Fermat's Last Theorem

Speaker: Silas Johnson

Abstract: When Fermat's Last Theorem was finally proved in 1995, the proof used an unexpected connection between this simple statement and objects called elliptic curves.  I'll introduce the basics of elliptic curves and discuss some of their connections to Fermat's famous conjecture, including a partial proof.

Free Pizza will be served.

When: Monday, October 1, 4:35 p.m.
Where: Room 901 Van Vleck.



September 17, 2012
Fall Kickoff Meeting!

Speaker: Gregory Shinault

Title: Fun with Dominoes!

Abstract: click here.

Free Pizza will be served.

When: Monday, September 17, 4:35 p.m.
Where: Room 901 Van Vleck.