Colloquium

Title: A Brief History of Calculating Machines Speaker: Yousef Daneshbod, Department of Mathematics, University of La Verne Abstract: Calculating machines are digital or analog devices designed to perform mathematical calculations. These machines have a long history, with the earliest known examples dating back to ancient times, when people used sticks and stones for counting. However, the […]

In this panel we will have people from diverse backgrounds talking about their career pathways. The event will be fully online in the following link: https://cgu.zoom.us/j/89142368885?pwd=YkhkV24zbUZRV0p2d2xEelZtUmFmdz09Meeting ID: 891 4236 8885Passcode: 314159 We will have panelist's introductions at the beginning, and then the remaining time in breakout rooms so that our students and faculty can ask more […]

Title: p-Norm Approval Voting Speaker: Michael Orrison, Professor of Mathematics, Harvey Mudd College Abstract: Approval voting is a relatively simple voting procedure: Given a set of candidates, each voter chooses a subset of the candidates, and the candidate chosen the most is then declared the winner. Interestingly, approval voting can be viewed as an extreme […]

Title: Building the Fan of a Toric Variety Speaker: Reginald Anderson, Department of Mathematical Sciences, Claremont McKenna College Abstract: Roughly speaking, algebraic geometry studies the zero sets of polynomials, which lead to objects called varieties. Since the zero sets of polynomials do not always pass the vertical line test, we enlist other methods to study […]

Title: Thinking Inside the Box: A combinatorial approach to Schubert Calculus Speaker: Sami H. Assaf, Department of Mathematics, University of Southern California Abstract: Given 2 lines in the plane, how many points lie on both? If we rule out the case where the two lines are the same, and we work in projective space so […]

Title: Equality Cases of Geometric Inequalities Speaker: Igor Pak, Department of Mathematics, University of California, Los Angeles Abstract: Geometric inequalities go back to antiquity, and so do their equality cases.  As everyone knows, the circle is the only case when the isoperimetric inequality is sharp.  But what happens to other geometric inequalities?  Apparently, as the […]

Stay tuned for more details about this special event!

Title: What is a moduli space? Speaker: Javier Gonzalez Anaya, Department of Mathematics, Harvey Mudd College Abstract: A natural endeavour in mathematics is to classify objects according to their properties. For example, we can readily identify straight lines in the plane, or recognize different kinds of triangles depending on their symmetries. Less intuitive, however, is that […]

Title: Slope gap distributions of translation surfaces Speaker: Taylor McAdam, Department of Mathematics, Pomona College Abstract: How “random” are the rational numbers? To make sense of this question, let us consider the set of Farey fractions of level n—that is, the rational numbers between 0 and 1 with denominator at most n. It turns out that these distribute uniformly in the […]

Title: Lonely Runners and My Favorite Polyhedron Speaker: Matthias Beck, Department of Mathematics, San Francisco State University Abstract: We study the Lonely Runner Conjecture, conceived by Wills in the 1960's, and originally phrased in terms of Diophantine approximation: Given positive integers n_1, n_2, ..., n_k, there exists a positive real number t such that for all […]