We comment on the main steps to take when studying some variational problems. This includes optimization problems arising in geometry, machine learning, non linear elasticity, fluid mechanics, etc... For the sake of illustration, in this talk, we keep our focus on a minimization problem obtained after a time-discretization of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. Elementary geometric […]
Deniz Sarikaya joining us from the Technical University of Denmark and speaking on "Narratives of Mathematical Practice (and why they matter!)" (abstract below). The speaker will join via zoom, but there will be a live audience on the second floor of Pitzer College's Gold Student Center in the Multipurpose room (in the building marked 3 here: https://www.pitzer.edu/about/maps-directions/quick-reference-map/). […]
In this talk we will consider some notions of `robustness' of graph/hypergraph properties. We will survey some existing results and will try to emphasize the following new result (joint with Adva Mond and Kaarel Haenni): The binomial random digraph $D_{n,p}$ typically contains the minimum between the minimum out- and in-degrees many edge-disjoint Hamilton cycles, given […]
Title: How Many Cards Can Avoid a SET? Speaker: Mohamed Omar, Department of Mathematics, Harvey Mudd College Abstract: SET is a popular real-time card game where players search for special triples of cards among a table of cards that are face-up. A common issue when playing the game is not having a SET among theface-up cards. What is […]
In this talk we discuss the Hilbert space approach, or the variational approach, in the study of questions of existence and multiplicity for some two-point boundary-value problems for nonlinear, second order, ordinary differential equations (ODEs). We illustrate the use of the Hilbert space approach in obtaining some old existence results for periodic solutions of a […]
Title:Inferring birth and death rates from population size time series data Abstract: Models of population dynamics are usually formulated and analyzed with net growth rates. However, separately identifying birth and death rates is significant in various biological applications such as disambiguating (1) exploitation vs. interference competition in ecology, (2) bacteriostatic vs. bactericidal antibiotics in clinical […]
Given a prime p, let P(t) be a non-constant monic polynomial in t over the ring of p-adic integers. Let X(n) be an n x n uniformly random (0,1)-matrix over the same ring. We compute the asymptotic distribution of the cokernel of P(X(n)) as n goes to infinity. When P(t) is square-free modulo p, this […]
Title: Reading Topology from Open Books Speaker: Bahar Acu, Department of Mathematics, Pitzer College Abstract: How can we study topological shapes that are outside the realm of our imagination? In this talk, we will explore potential answers to that question by diving deep into dimensionality and topology via open books. Topology is the study of properties of shapes that […]
Title: A common pathway to cancer: oncogenic mutations abolish p53 oscillations. Abstract: The tumor suppressor p53 oscillates in response to DNA double-strand breaks, a behavior that has been suggested to be essential to its anti-cancer function. Nearly all human cancers have genetic alterations in the p53 pathway; a number of these alterations have been shown to […]
Given votes for candidates, what is the best way to determine the winner of the election, if some of the votes have been corrupted or miscounted? As we saw in Florida in 2000, where a difference of 537 votes determined the president of the United States, the electoral college system does not seem to be […]
Title: Wallis and Landen: A Tale of two integrals Speaker: Victor Moll, Department of Mathematics, Tulane University Abstract: Victor Moll Abstract I was born in Santiago, Chile during the last millenium, on October 31st. My father was a doctor in a small town. I must have been bothering my family, so they put me […]
Using elementary methods from differential equations and analysis we will consider the existence and multiplicity of solutions to semilinear partial differential equations with boundary conditions.
