Great Expectations (Matthew Junge, Duke Univ.)
The mean of a random quantity is supposed to confirm our expectations. What happens when it defies them? We will look at a few famous expected values; some old, some […]
12 events found.
Events
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Argue Auditorium, Pomona College 610 N. College Ave., Claremont, CA, United States
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Isometric Circle Actions (Catherline Searle, Wichita State)
Argue Auditorium, Pomona College 610 N. College Ave., Claremont, CA, United StatesI will begin by describing a number of important examples of isometric actions of circles in Euclidean space and their restrictions to subspaces of Euclidean space. The goal of the talk will […]
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Minimal Gaussian Partitions, Clustering Hardness and Voting (Steven Heilman, USC)
Emmy Noether Room, Millikan 1021, Pomona College 610 N. College Ave., Claremont, CaliforniaA single soap bubble has a spherical shape since it minimizes its surface area subject to a fixed enclosed volume of air. When two soap bubbles collide, they form a "double-bubble" composed of three spherical caps. The double-bubble minimizes total surface area among all sets enclosing two fixed volumes. This was proven mathematically in a […]
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Uniform asymptotic growth of symbolic powers (Robert Walker, University of Michigan)
Millikan 2099, Pomona College 610 N. College Ave., Claremont, CA, United StatesAlgebraic geometry (AG) is a major generalization of linear algebra which is fairly influential in mathematics. Since the 1980's with the development of computer algebra systems like Mathematica, AG has been leveraged in areas of STEM as diverse as statistics, robotic kinematics, computer science/geometric modeling, and mirror symmetry. Part one of my talk will be a […]
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Saving Bats from Fungal Diseases with Linear Algebra (Nina Fefferman, U of Tennessee-Knoxville)
Argue Auditorium, Pomona College 610 N. College Ave., Claremont, CA, United StatesAbstract: Bats in North America have been dying off due to the invasion of a fungal disease (White Nose Syndrome). In this talk, I'll present a very simple linear algebraic model to predict the magnitude of the die-offs. By comparing these models to some data about actual bat survival, my collaborator and I also hypothesized […]
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GEMS Workshop: Exploring the fascinating world of prime numbers, Part I with Professor Adolfo Rumbos, from Pomona College.
Shanahan 1480, Harvey Mudd College 301 Platt Blvd., Claremont, CA, United StatesTOPIC: Exploring the fascinating world of prime numbers, Part I The study of patterns in the sequence of prime numbers has fascinated mathematicians for centuries. Are there formulas that generate prime numbers? Are there patterns in the distribution of prime numbers and the distribution of gaps between consecutive primes? In this series of two workshops, beginning […]
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CFTP: the algorithm ERGM deserves, but not the one it needs right now (Matt Moores, University of Wollongong)
Emmy Noether Room, Millikan 1021, Pomona College 610 N. College Ave., Claremont, CaliforniaThe exchange algorithm enables Bayesian posterior inference for models with intractable likelihoods, such as Ising, Potts, or exponential random graph models (ERGM). Crucially, this algorithm relies on an auxiliary Markov chain to obtain an unbiased sample from the generative distribution of the model. It was originally proposed to use coupling from the past (CFTP) for […]
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Turning probability into polynomials (Mark Huber, CMC)
Millikan 2099, Pomona College 610 N. College Ave., Claremont, CA, United StatesMoment generating functions (Laplace transforms) are a means for transforming probability problems into problems involving polynomials. Here I will concentrate on the binomial distribution, and use the mgf to link this distributions probabilities directly to the binomial theorem. The mgf is also a key ingredient in Chernoff bounds, which give upper bounds on the tail […]
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The Legacy of Rudolph Kalman (Andrew Stuart, Caltech)
Argue Auditorium, Pomona College 610 N. College Ave., Claremont, CA, United StatesAbstract: In 1960 Rudolph Kalman published what is arguably the first paper to develop a systematic, principled approach to the use of data to improve the predictive capability of mathematical models. As our ability to gather data grows at an enormous rate, the importance of this work continues to grow too. The lecture will describe this paper, and developments that […]
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Crossing the Threshold: The Role of Demographic Stochasticity in the Evolution of Cooperation (Tom LoFaro, Gustavus Adolphus College)
Shanahan 3465, Harvey Mudd College 301 Platt Blvd., Claremont, CA, United StatesWhen Charles Darwin began writing “On the Origin of Species” he knew that explaining cooperative behavior in the context of “survival of the fittest” was problematic. In fact, this apparent contradiction puzzled ecologists for many years after. In this talk we will discuss a mathematical model of the evolution of cooperation developed by Doebeli, Blarer, […]
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Digital sequences for frequency hopping CDMA systems (Lenny Fukshansky, CMC)
Emmy Noether Room, Millikan 1021, Pomona College 610 N. College Ave., Claremont, CaliforniaFrequency hopping is a method of transmitting signals by rapidly switching between many frequency channels, following some sequence of frequencies known to the transmitter and the receiver. This technique is used in the CDMA (code division multiple access) systems, and has many civilian and military applications. For successful transmission minimizing signal interference, we want to use sets […]
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Cayley digraphs of matrix rings over finite fields (Yesim Demiroglu, HMC)
Millikan 2099, Pomona College 610 N. College Ave., Claremont, CA, United StatesIn this talk we use the unit-graphs and the special unit-digraphs on matrix rings to show that every n x n nonzero matrix over F_q can be written as a sum of two SL_n-matrices when n>1. We compute the eigenvalues of these graphs in terms of Kloosterman sums and study their spectral properties; and prove […]