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News & Events

Seminars & Workshops

 

The Department of Mathematical Sciences enjoys an active Colloquium series. There are also departmental research seminars in Analysis and Discrete Mathematics.

Fall 2008

Discrete Math Seminar

  • Matt Walsh, The paranoid watchman: a search problem in graphs.
  • Chip Vandell, Connected decycling.
  • Doug Weakley, Automorphism groups, determining sets, and distance determining sets for rook's graphs and queen's graphs. 1:30 Friday, 3 October.
    • The toroidal queen's graph (Q_n)^t has the n^2 squares of the nxn chessboard as its vertex set. Two vertices are adjacent if they share the same row, column, or extended diagonal. A related graph is the rook's graph R_n, which has the same vertex set as (Q_n)^t; here two squares are adjacent if they share the same row or column. I'll sketch finding the automorphism group of (Q_n)^t for each n, and of R_n. For a graph G, a determining set (also called a fixing set) is a set S of vertices of G such that for each automorphism f of G, the action of f on the members of S determines f. The minimum size of a determining set of G is det(G). A distance determining set (also called a resolving set or reference set or locating set) of G is a set of vertices of G, say v1, v2, ..., vk, such that for any vertex v of G, the k-tuple ((d(v1, v), ..., d(vk, v)) of distances determines v. The minimum size of a distance determining set is dim(G). Every distance determining set is a determining set, so det(G) <= dim(G). I'll sketch finding det(R_n) and dim(R_n), and talk about going on to the toroidal queen's graph.

Analysis Seminar

  • Yifei Pan, Unique continuation for ODEs, parts I and II.
    Part II: Rescheduled for a later date

Pi Math Club

  • Prof. David Erbach, IPFW Computer Science, Things, Symmetry, and Groups. Monday, Oct. 6, noon in KT216.
    • All objects have symmetry, but some objects are more symmetrical than others. A careful look at an object's symmetry is often an interesting and powerful view into the object's fundamental properties. Group theory is symmetry without the object; the grin without the cat. Sometimes it's an easy way to answer otherwise hard questions. Sometimes it's just interesting. In this talk, we'll take an easy walk into Grouptheoryland, to see what we can see of both grin and cat.

 

Spring 2008

Colloquium

  • Natalia Zorii, Institute of Mathematics, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Can the 2-capacity of a space condenser be written in terms of Newton energies? A solution to a problem of F. W. Gehring.
  • Michael Bolt, Calvin College, Paint by number: a visualization of complex functions.
    • One challenge to understanding complex analysis is the difficulty one can have in forming an intuition for analytic functions. Frank Farris found a new way to visualize complex functions. The idea is to associate numbers with colors and to paint a domain with the values of the associated function. In this talk we describe different implementations of domain coloring and contrast it with the usual transformational approach. We also use domain coloring to illustrate some of the nice theorems in complex analysis.
    • paint by number

Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecture:

  • Edward B. Saff, Vanderbilt University, The Poppy-Seed Bagel Theorem: An easily digestible result on minimum energy points.

Sigma Xi brown-bag lecture series:

  • Adam Coffman, Geometry and Soap Bubbles.

Workshop

Alumni Event

Analysis Seminar

  • Adam Coffman, CR singularities of real 4-manifolds in C3, parts I, II.

Pi Math Club

  • Prof. Don Hooley, Bluffton University, Searching for Solutions in a Trans-Elliptic Haystack.
  • Student Talks: L. Hicks, R. Lucas, N. Pham, D. Swartz.
  • Prof. Michael Bolt, Calvin College, The mathematics of Escher's "Print Gallery".
    • One of Escher's more compelling works is "Print Gallery" in which a young man stands in an art gallery, viewing a print that contains the very gallery in which he is standing. At the center is a curious hole, blank except for the artist's signature. In 2000, Hendrik Lenstra discovered the mathematical structure behind "Print Gallery" and showed there is a unique solution for what belongs in the hole. In this talk, we'll see how a team of scientists filled in the hole and generated a number of images and animations that illustrate other versions of the picture. Along the way, we'll introduce all the complex analysis that is needed to generate images like Escher's. The mathematics should be understandable to anyone with a year of calculus.
    • click for larger Escher picture

Pi Mu Epsilon

  • Matt Walsh, According to their respective numbers: the politics and mathematics of apportionment.

 

Fall 2007

College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Lecturer

  • Daniel Rockmore, Dartmouth College, Stalking the Riemann Hypothesis. Dr. Rockmore also presented a video for the PI Math Club, "The Math Life".

Colloquium

  • Shelly Harkness, University of Cincinnati, What if "Believing" Rather Than "Doubting" Was the "Bedhogger" in Our Mathematics Teaching Practice?
  • David Benko, Western Kentucky University, Approximation by Homogeneous Polynomials.

Pi Math Club

  • Adam Coffman, A Survey of Projective Geometry.

Analysis Seminar

  • Peter Dragnev, The support of the equilibrium measure for external fields with concave signed equilibria. I, II.
  • Erwin Mina-Diaz, The location of the zeros of Carleman orthogonal polynomials.

 

Archive of Past Seminars, Colloquia, and Events (1997-2007)

 

Some other past events: