This talk is based on joint work with Jens Marklof, and with Roland Roeder. The three distance theorem states that, if x is any real number and N is any positive integer, the points x, 2x, … , Nx modulo 1 partition the unit interval into component intervals having at most 3 distinct lengths. We will present two higher dimensional analogues of this problem. In the first we consider points of the form mx+ny modulo 1, where x and y…

By Hilbert’s theorem 90, if K is a cyclic number field with Galois group generated by g, then any element of norm 1 can be written as a/g(a).  This gives rise to a natural height function on elements of norm 1.  I’ll discuss equidistribution problems and show that these norm 1 elements are equidistributed (in an appropriate quotient) with respect to this height.

We describe a natural way to continuously extend arithmetic functions that admit a Ramanujan expansion and derive the conditions under which such an extension exists. In particular, we show that the absolute convergence of a Ramanujan expansion does not guarantee the convergence of its real variable generalization. We take the divisor function as a case study, and consider how to continuously extend it to the reals.

Peg solitaire is a popular one person board game that has been played in many countries on various board shapes. Recently, peg solitaire has been studied extensively in two colors on mathematical graphs. We will present our rules for multiple color peg solitaire on graphs. We will present some student and faculty results classifying the solvability of the game on several graceful graphs, as well as discuss open questions.

In 1932, Tarski conjectured that a convex body of width 1 can be covered by planks, regions between two parallel hyperplanes, only if the total width of planks is at least 1. In 1951, Bang proved the conjecture of Tarski. In this work we study the polynomial version of Tarski's plank problem. We note that the recent polynomial proofs of the spherical and complex plank covering problems by Zhao and Ortega-Moreno give some general information on zeros of real and…

In this talk we link discrete Markov spectrum to geometry of continued fractions. As a result of that we get a natural generalization of classical Markov tree which leads to an efficient computation of Markov minima for all elements in generalized Markov trees.

I will explain how to apply presentations of algebras (together with some classical results from non-commutative algebra) to obtain some 5 polynomial invariants telling us when two pairs of 2x2 matrices over a commutative ring are conjugate, assuming that each of these pairs generate the matrix algebra. This talk is based on my joint paper with Marcin Mazur (Binghamton University):  Separable algebras over infinite fields are 2-generated and finitely presented, Arch. Math. 93 (2009), 521-529.

As  $\lambda$ runs through all integer partitions, the set of   Schur functions $\{s_{\lambda}\}_\lambda$ forms a basis in the ring of symmetric functions. Hence the rule $$s_{\lambda}s_{\mu}=\sum c_{\lambda,\mu}^{\gamma} s_{\gamma}$$ makes sense and the coefficients $c_{\lambda,\mu}^{\gamma}$ are called \textit{Littlewood-Richardson (LR) coefficients}. The calculations of Littlewood-Richardson coefficients has been an important problem from the first time they were introduced, due to their important role in representation theory of symmetric groups and enumerative geometry. In this talk we will explain some of the main…