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.
|
