Fall 2001 Schedule

• You Say You Want a Revolution? (September 26, 2001)
  In what way to numbers really exist? Do parallel lines ever intersect? Is "false" the same as "not true"? Patrick Bahls will help find answers to revolutionary mathematical questions like these at the first installment of the fall 2001 VU Undergraduate Seminar in Mathematics.

• Math, Music, MP3's, and More (October 3, 2001)
  Ever wonder how you can store a song on your computer as a bunch of 1's and 0's and still listen to it anytime you want? Or how you can scan a photo, compress it, and email it to anyone you like? What does it mean to compress a photo anyway? And what does mathematics have to do with all of this? Join Derek Bruff as he talks about math, music, MP3's, and more at this week's Undergraduate Seminar in Mathematics. (Click here for the overheads Derek used in his talk.)

  

• Order Up! (October 10, 2001)
  Almost every time we try to put any collection of things – numbers, movies, record albums, schools, whatever – into some kind of order, we tend to put them into a list. Is this the only way to put things in order? How do we break “ties”? Can we do better? If so, what do we really mean when we talk about “order”? In the third installment of the Fall 2001 Undergraduate Seminar in Mathematics, Jac Cole will make some sense of these questions, adding a little order to all of our lives.

• A World of Tile (October 17, 2001)
  Repeated patterns are used for decoration nearly everywhere--from the tiling on your bathroom floor to the friezes at the top of many buildings. For centuries, artists have explored the different types of symmetry that appear in these patterns. Scientists have tried to classify the same types of patterns, in order to understand the symmetries in crystals. In the past two centuries, mathematical concepts have been developed which enable us to precisely classify the types of symmetries in these patterns, and to show that there are exactly 17 different ways to tile the plane. Come to this talk by Ashley Ahlin to see beautiful tilings from the Alhambra (a Moorish palace where all 17 different patterns may appear), from Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher, and to find out why there are exactly 17 different ways to pattern the plane. (To see animations of all 17 wallpaper tilings Ashley described in her talk, click here.)

• Fractals (October 30, 2001)
  What are fractals and what do they have to do with the stock exchange or the difference between broccoli and cauliflower? In this week's talk, we'll explore a world of fractals and find out about the mathematician, physicist, economist, and physiologist who first discovered that world.

• The Million Dollar Question (November 6, 2001)
  Computers do what they do using algorithms. But what is an algorithm? And what is it that makes one algorithm better than another? Computer scientists are particularly interested in how long a computer has to run with a given algorithm before they're guaranteed it will find a solution. Mathematicians are interested in this question as well. In fact, they're so interested that they've offered a million-dollar prize to anyone who can answer the question, "Does P=NP?" Join Chris Stephens as he talks about the Million Dollar Question at this week's seminar.

• Huh? (November 13, 2001)
  Howza? Whazzat? Whatchasay? Have you ever learned something that made you wrinkle your brow and tilt your head like a confused little puppy dog? Have you ever felt like you were just outside of “the loop”? Some things just can’t be true... or can they? Derek Bruff and Patrick Bahls will point out all kinds of hiccups in our reasoning when we deal with math as they talk about some mathematical ideas that just might not make sense at the latest installment of the Undergraduate Seminar in Mathematics.

• On the Shoulders of Giants (December 4, 2001)
  Giving credit to his predecessors, Isaac Newton once said that if it had seemed as though he had seen further than others had, it was because he had stood on the shoulders of giants. In every generation there are a few such "giants" in the field of mathematics. Who are they? In this week's installment of the Undergraduate Seminar, Petar Markovic will introduce us to the life and times of one of these giants who very recently walked among us, a brilliant man named Paul Erdos.