One of the most important axioms in analyzing voting systems is that of "neutrality", which stipulates that the system should treat all candidates symmetrically. Even though this doesn't always directly apply (such as in primary systems or those with intentional incumbent protection), it is extremely important both in theory and practice.If the voting systems in […]
A frame in a Euclidean space is a spanning set, which can be overdetermined. Large frames are used for redundant signal transmission, which allows for error correction. An important parameter of frames is coherence, which is maximal absolute value of the cosine of the angle between two frame vectors: the smaller it is, the closer […]
A power permutation of a finite field F is a permutation of F whose functional form is x -> x^d for some exponent d. Power permutations are used in cryptography, and the exponent d must be chosen so that the permutation is highly nonlinear, that is, not easily approximated by linear functions. The Walsh spectrum […]
The set of subsets {1, 3}, {1, 3, 4}, {1, 3, 4, 6} is a symmetric chain in the partially ordered set (poset) of subsets of {1,...,6}. It is a chain, because each of the subsets is a subset of the next one. It is symmetric because the collection has as many subsets with less […]
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 […]
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 […]
We will discuss the sparsity of the solutions to systems of linear Diophantine equations with and without non-negativity constraints. The sparsity of a solution vector is the number of its nonzero entries, which is referred to as the 0-norm of the vector. Our main results are new improved bounds on the minimal 0-norm of solutions […]
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. […]
We consider the problem of comparing the number of discrete points that belong to a set with the measure (or volume) of the set, under circumstances where we expect these two numbers to be approximately equal. We start with a locally compact, abelian, topological group G. We assume that G has a countably infinite, torsion […]
It is widely believed that Weierstrass ignored Eisenstein's theory of elliptic functions and developed an alternative treatment, which is now standard, because of a convergence issue. In particular, the Eisenstein series of weight two does not converge absolutely while Eisenstein's theory assigned a value to this series. It is now well-known that the quantity which […]
The complete homogeneous symmetric (CHS) polynomials can be used to define a family of norms on Hermitian matrices. These 'CHS norms' are peculiar in the sense that they depend only on the eigenvalues of a matrix and not its singular values (as opposed to the Ky-Fan and Schatten norms). We will first give a general overview behind […]
A Belyi map $\beta: \mathbb{P}^1(\mathbb{C}) \to \mathbb{P}^1(\mathbb{C})$ is a rational function with at most three critical values; we may assume these values are $\{ 0, \, 1, \, \infty \}$. Replacing $\mathbb{P}^1$ with an elliptic curve $E: \ y^2 = x^3 + A \, x + B$, there is a similar definition of a Belyi […]
