Given an isotropic integral quadratic form which assumes a value t, we investigate the distribution of integer points at which this value is assumed. Building on the previous work about the distribution of small-height zeros of quadratic forms, we produce bounds on height of points outside of some algebraic sets in a quadratic space at […]
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, […]
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. […]
In 1846, Ernst Eduard Kummer conjectured a distribution of values of a cubic Gauss sum after computing a few values by hand. This was forgotten about for nearly 100 years […]
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 […]
The Bateman—Horn Conjecture is a far-reaching statement about the distribution of the prime numbers. It implies many known results, such as the Green—Tao theorem, and a variety of famous conjectures, such as the Twin Prime Conjecture. In this expository talk, we start from basic principles and provide a heuristic argument in favor of the conjecture. […]
Algebraic geometry (AG) is a major generalization of linear algebra which is fairly influential in mathematics. Since the 1980's with the development of computer algebra systems like Mathematica, AG has been […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
