GSAC Colloquium
Spring 2024
Tuesdays, 2:00-2:50 PM, JWB 308
MATH 6960-001
(Dates with * indicate an unusual time or location)
| Date | Description | Contact |
|---|---|---|
| Jan 9 | GSAC Kickoff | Keshav Patel |
| Jan 16 | No GSAC | |
| Jan 23 | Moonwalk with Your Coffee to Avoid Spilling We've all been there --- you are walking normally through the hallway with a mug of coffee, when all of a sudden you feel a splash of hot coffee on your hand. You didn't even bump into anything! Turns out this is an unfortunate consequence of mug design coupled with our standard walking pace. In this talk, we will show data and a simple oscillator model to determine why this happens, and propose some rather cursed methods for keeping your coffee in your mug for maximal enjoyment. |
Keshav Patel |
| Jan 30 | History of My Thinning Hair: An Introduction to Representations My hair has been thinning for 7 years. Interestingly, this is also how long I have cared about Lie groups. Coincidence?! I think not! In this talk I will discuss the beauty and beast that is representations of Lie groups. A tale that takes us through the lands of analysis, algebra, and algebraic geometry. Time permitting, I will discuss some recent progress in the field by Mason-Brown and his collaborators. |
Jack Cook |
| Feb 6 | Grad Student Town Hall We will have an informal, grad student-only town hall! One of our GSAC co-chairs, Katie Lynch, will be available to hear how students are doing and to hear any concerns. We especially want to hear from younger students! |
Keshav Patel |
| Feb 13 | Introduction to Atonal Music for Mathematicians There are a lot of connections between music and mathematics (and physics), such as acoustics, rhythm, harmonics, Fourier analysis of waves, tuning systems, etc. In this talk we will discuss a less known connection which was developed in the 20th century to understand musical ideas which were not easily understood using "traditional" music theory. We will see how ideas from group theory and combinatorics were applied as compositional techniques and can be used to analyze music from Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Babbit, Chopin, Wagner, Liszt, to the music of TV and movies such as Tom and Jerry, Planet of the Apes, and the Matrix Trilogy. No music theory will be assumed as prerequisite in this talk. | Yotam Svoray |
| Feb 20 | Cube Fruits 95% of people cannot solve this! That's the claim made by this social media post featuring an algebra problem with fruits for variables. Shall we see if we make the cut? This talk walks through a solution to this problem, highlighting necessary aspects of the theory of Diophantine equations and elliptic curves along the way. |
Abhay Goel |
| Feb 27 | Finding and Making Time We've been taking time for granted. Whether we take a derivative with respect to time or find the first passage time we ignore what is this "time" we're measuring. In a way to rectify this I'm going to cover hundreds of years of time-keeping in a few minutes to learn how we got here, why are we measuring time the way we are and maybe we'll learn why every math class is behind before the first lecture even starts. |
Patrick Talley |
| Mar 5 | Spring Break | |
| Mar 12 | AWM-RTG Speaker Series Dr. Carolyn Abbott (Brandeis) will be visiting as part of the AWM-RTG Speaker Series! She will be giving a career path talk during GSAC Colloquium, talking about her journey as a mathematician and offering advice to grad students. |
Keshav Patel |
| Mar 19 | AWM-RTG Speaker Series This week, the AWM has invited Dr. Ami Radunskaya from Pamona College as part of the AWM-RTG Speaker Series. During GSAC Colloquium, we will hear Ami discuss her career path and her experiences as a past president of AWM. This is a great opportunity to get some advice from a well-respected faculty member. |
Keshav Patel |
| Mar 26 | Shut your pie hole! ...is what I imagine the audience will unanimously exclaim as we go through a cherry-picked biography (piography?) of our favorite mathematical dessert constant. Join us this Tuesday afternoon as we embark on our journey to find the most outlandish (irrational even) ways to calculate π. Bring your scientific curiosity (and possibly a scientific calculator) along for this fashionably late celebration of π day. |
Aryaman Maithani |
| Apr 2 | Applying for Postdocs Panel We are inviting a few of our newer postdocs to join us for an Applying to Postdoc Positions Panel! If you have questions about the application process, interviewing, and ultimately selecting a position, this will be a great opportunity to get them answered. |
Keshav Patel |
| Apr 9 | The Broken Dice Randomness is omnipresent in nature, despite conscious and unconscious effort by humans to control our world and minimize its effects. Inspired by a book I found (by chance) at Ken Sanders Rare Books, I will explore our complicated relationship with randomness and uncertainty from a mathematical lens. What does this relationship imply about us as humans, and further, what does it imply about the mathematical constructs we form to understand our world? |
Tory Richardson |
| Apr 16 | TBD | |
| Apr 23 | Elections | Keshav Patel |