Title: Nonnegative Polynomials and Sums of Squares Abstract: Is x4-2x3+7x2-2x+1 nonnegative for any value of x? One way of showing that this holds is by writing x4-2x3+7x2-2x+1=1/2(x2-3x+1)2+1/2(x2+x+1)2. Studying the relationship […]
Title: Injustice, Inequity, and Inequality: Lessons at the Intersection of Mathematics, Epidemiology, and Racism Registration information for this talk at: https://www.hmc.edu/mathematics/moody-lecture-series/ Abstract:The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed existing health inequities for communities of color in the United States. Racism is a known structural cause of these health inequities. Counterfactuals are essential to our understanding of causal […]
Title: Combinatorics and the Kitchen Sink Abstract: Numerical semigroups are simple combinatorial objects that lead to deep and subtle questions. We answer in one fell swoop virtually all asymptotic questions about factorization lengths in numerical semigroups. Surprisingly, this uses tools from complex, harmonic, and functional analysis, probability theory, algebraic combinatorics, and computer-aided design! Our results […]
Title: Training dynamical systems to predict their input Abstract: Evolved systems seem to predict their environment. Even bacteria can implicitly predict future concentrations of scarce sugar or antibiotics, and emerging evidence suggests that even our retinae are able to predict what we see. How? We explore some basic design principles for what causes a system […]
Title: Sea star locomotion Abstract: The oral surface of sea stars (starfish) is lined with arrays of tube feet that enable them to achieve highly controlled locomotion on various terrains and to even gallop and bounce. The activity of the tube feet is orchestrated by a nerve net that is distributed throughout the body; there […]
Title: The Effect of Criminal Justice Decisions on Community Safety Abstract: During this talk we will, time permitting, examine several law enforcement actor's impact on community safety, including law enforcement, […]
Hosted by David Bachman. This is a time for us to welcome each other back from break, share any news relevant to mathematics in Claremont, and break out into smaller […]
Title: Networks in social systems Abstract: The spread of memes and misinformation on social media, political redistricting, interactions in animal populations, and the dynamics of voters during elections are among the many things that people study in the field of complex systems. All of these phenomena involve the interactions of individual parts, which come together […]
Title: No-arbitrage pricing in a market for position on a multilane freeway, with an application to lane changing Abstract: We introduce a trading mechanism allowing cars to change position in […]
Title: Quantitative Investment and Modern Portfolio Theory Abstract: Investment strategies come in many flavors. Quantitative strategies incorporate or fully direct investment based on mathematical models. One of the cornerstones of investment is portfolio management, and modern portfolio theory can serve as a basis for quantitative portfolio management. In this talk, we will discuss quantitative investing […]
Title: Using Topology to Measure Shape in Data Abstract: Data of various kinds is being collected at an enormous rate, and in many different forms. Often, the data are equipped with a notion of distance that reflects similarity in some sense. Using this similarity measure, certain topological features--e.g. the number of connected components, loops, and […]
Title: Spectral gap in random regular graphs and hypergraphs Abstract: Random graphs and hypergraphs have been used for decades to model large-scale networks, from biological, to electrical, and to social. Various random graphs (and their not-so-random properties) have been connected to algorithms solving problems from community detection to matrix completion, coding theory, and various other […]
