• Applied Math Seminar — Sara Clifton (St. Olaf College)

    Emmy Noether Room, Estella 1021, Pomona College, 610 N. College Ave., Claremont, CA, United States

    Title: Understanding Complex Social Systems using Minimal Mathematical Models Abstract: Minimal mathematical models are used to understand complex phenomena in the physical, biological, and social sciences. This modeling philosophy never claims, nor even attempts, to fully capture the mechanisms underlying the phenomena, and instead offers insights and predictions not otherwise possible. Here, we explore minimal […]

  • The Chow ring of heavy/light Hassett spaces via tropical geometry (Dagan Karp, HMC)

    On Zoom

    Hassett spaces in genus 0 are moduli spaces of weighted pointed stable rational curves; they are important in the minimal model program and enumerative geometry. We compute the Chow ring of heavy/light Hassett spaces. The computation involves intersection theory on the toric variety corresponding to a graphic matroid, and rests upon the work of Cavalieri-Hampe-Markwig-Ranganathan. […]

  • Applied Math Seminar — Christopher Miles (UC Irvine)

    Emmy Noether Room, Estella 1021, Pomona College, 610 N. College Ave., Claremont, CA, United States

    Title:  Collective motion in the mitotic spindle Abstract:  Math models of interacting individuals moving as a collective have been profoundly successful in describing physical and social phenomena ranging from swarming insects […]

  • Collective Behavior in Locust Swarms from Data to Differential Equations (Prof. Jasper Weinburd)

    Zoom

    Title: Collective Behavior in Locust Swarms from Data to Differential Equations   Prof. Jasper Weinburd Department of Mathematics Harvey Mudd College   Abstract: Locusts are devastating pests that infest and destroy crops. Locusts forage and migrate in large swarms which exhibit distinctive shapes that improve efficiency on the group level, a phenomenon known as collective […]

  • Thanksgiving Week

    Emmy Noether Room, Millikan 1021, Pomona College 610 N. College Ave., Claremont, California

    No applied math talk

  • Odd subgraphs are odd (Asaf Ferber, UC Irvine)

    On Zoom

    In this talk we discuss some problems related to finding large induced subgraphs of a given graph G which satisfy some degree-constraints (for example, all degrees are odd, or all degrees are j mod k, etc). We survey some classical results, present some interesting and challenging problems, and sketch solutions to some of them. This […]

  • A tribute to Professor Ellis Cumberbatch (1934-2021)

    Zoom

    Title: A tribute to Professor Ellis Cumberbatch (1934-2021) Abstract: The math colloquium on December 1st will be devoted to remembrances of our beloved CGU colleague Professor Ellis Cumberbatch, a pillar […]

  • Difference sets in higher dimensions (David Conlon, Cal Tech)

    On Zoom

    Let d >= 2 be a natural number. We determine the minimum possible size of the difference set A-A in terms of |A| for any sufficiently large finite subset A of R^d that is not contained in a translate of a hyperplane. By a construction of Stanchescu, this is best possible and thus resolves an […]

  • Where do Putnam problems come from? (Prof. Andrew Bernoff)

    Title: Where do Putnam problems come from? Speaker: Andrew Bernoff, Department of Mathematics, Harvey Mudd College Abstract: The William Lowell Putnam Exam is the preeminent mathematics competition for undergraduate college students […]