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 a multilane congested freeway by doing peer-to-peer transactions. For the car initiating the operation, or incoming car, the goal can be to increase speed, to […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
Title: Finding soap films in non-Euclidean geometry Abstract: In many computer graphics applications we approximate a smooth surface with one made up of tiny triangles. A common problem is to […]
Title: Our muscles aren't one-dimensional fibres. Abstract: Skeletal muscles possess rather amazing mechanical properties. They possess an intricate structure, and behave nonlinearly in response to mechanical stresses. In the 1910s, […]
Title: An ideal convergence: an example in noncommutative metric geometry Abstract: The ability to calculate the distance between sets (rather than just distance between points) has found applications in geometry and group theory as well as various branches of applied mathematics. The Hausdorff distance and the Gromov-Hausdorff distance are standard distances used in these applications. […]
Title: How do zebrafish get their stripes — or spots? Abstract: Many natural and social systems involve individual agents coming together to create group dynamics, whether the agents are drivers in a traffic jam, voters in an election, or locusts in a swarm. Self-organization also occurs at much smaller scales in biology, though, and here […]
Title: Groups, Graphs and Trees Abstract: What do we mean by the geometry of a group? Groups seem like very abstract objects when we first study them, and it's natural to ask whether we can visualize them in some way. Given a group with a finite set of generators and relators, I will describe a […]
Title: Trace Ideals and Endomorphism Rings Abstract: In many branches of mathematics, the full set of "functions" between two objects exhibits remarkable structure; it often forms a group and in some special cases it forms a ring. In this talk, we will discuss this phenomenon in Commutative Algebra. In particular, we will talk about the […]
Title: Puzzling Permutations Abstract: Permutations are one of the most fundamental notions in mathematics. In this talk, we will discuss a visual representation of permutations and introduce some games one can play to help "see" different properties. These puzzling games can be used to provide insight into deeper mathematical content as well. Time permitting, we […]
