• Inversions for reduced words (Sami Assaf, USC)

    Millikan 2099, Pomona College 610 N. College Ave., Claremont, CA, United States

    The number of inversions of a permutation is an important statistic that arises in many contexts, including as the minimum number of simple transpositions needed to express the permutation and, […]

  • Quandle coloring quivers (Sam Nelson, CMC)

    Millikan 2099, Pomona College 610 N. College Ave., Claremont, CA, United States

    Given a finite quandle $X$, a set $S \subset \mathrm{Hom}(X,X)$ of quandle endomoprhisms, and an oriented knot or link $L$, we construct a quiver-valued invariant of oriented knots and links. […]

  • State Polytopes of Combinatorial Neural Codes (Rob Davis, HMC)

    Millikan 2099, Pomona College 610 N. College Ave., Claremont, CA, United States

    Combinatorial neural codes are 0/1 vectors that are used to model the co-firing patterns of a set of place cells in the brain. One wide-open problem in this area is to determine when a given code can be algorithmically drawn in the plane as a Venn diagram-like figure. A sufficient condition to do so is […]

  • Turning probability into polynomials (Mark Huber, CMC)

    Millikan 2099, Pomona College 610 N. College Ave., Claremont, CA, United States

    Moment generating functions (Laplace transforms) are a means for transforming probability problems into problems involving polynomials.  Here I will concentrate on the binomial distribution, and use the mgf to link […]

  • Cayley digraphs of matrix rings over finite fields (Yesim Demiroglu, HMC)

    Millikan 2099, Pomona College 610 N. College Ave., Claremont, CA, United States

    In this talk we use the unit-graphs and the special unit-digraphs on matrix rings to show that every n x n nonzero matrix over F_q can be written as a sum of two SL_n-matrices when n>1. We compute the eigenvalues of these graphs in terms of Kloosterman sums and study their spectral properties; and prove […]

  • Weil sums of binomials: properties and applications (Daniel Katz, CSUN)

    Millikan 2099, Pomona College 610 N. College Ave., Claremont, CA, United States

    We consider sums in which an additive character of a finite field F is applied to a binomial whose individual terms (monomials) become permutations of F when regarded as functions.  These Weil sums characterize the nonlinearity of power permutations of interest in cryptography.  They also tell us about the correlation of linear recursive sequences over finite fields that are used […]

  • Sperner’s lemma: generalizations and applications (Oleg Musin, UT Rio Grande Valley)

    Millikan 2099, Pomona College 610 N. College Ave., Claremont, CA, United States

    The classical Sperner -  KKM (Knaster - Kuratowski - Mazurkiewicz) lemma has many applications  in combinatorics, algorithms, game theory and mathematical economics. In this talk we consider generalizations of this lemma as well as Gale's colored KKM lemma and Shapley's KKMS theorem. It is shown that spaces and covers can be much more general and […]

  • The Bateman—Horn conjecture II: applications (Stephan Garcia, Pomona)

    Millikan 2099, Pomona College 610 N. College Ave., Claremont, CA, United States

    We begin with a review of the Bateman—Horn conjecture, which sheds light on the intimate relationship between polynomials and prime numbers.  In this expository talk, we survey a host of applications of the conjecture.  For example, Landau’s conjecture, the twin prime conjecture, and the Green—Tao theorem are all consequences of the Bateman—Horn conjecture.  Moreover, the […]