Fall 2005 Schedule
To Infinity... And Beyond! (Literally!) (Thursday, September 29)Speaker: Casey Leonetti
Say you've got an infinite number of quarters in a jar - a really big jar. Then you decide to toss another quarter into the jar. How many quarters do you have now? What do you get when you add one to infinity? How about adding infinity to infinity? Can one infinity be larger than another? What does infinity mean, anyway? Join math graduate student Casey Leonetti at this week's Undergraduate Seminar in Mathematics and learn everything you've always wanted to know about infinity, but were afraid to ask!
Is Our Space Flat or Curved? (Thursday, October 6)Speaker: Yuliya Babenko
Most of us are familiar with the term GEOMETRY. The only real difference between one high-schooler and another's opinion on geometry is the connotation of the word. It may be interesting to know, for someone whose knowledge on geometry comes only from the course they took in high school, that what they learned to be a straight line is curved in other types of geometry. These types of geometry are called non-Euclidean because they do not follow the rules that were concretely established in Euclid's Elements.
Join Yuliya Babenko to discover worlds with new geometries, where curves are straight lines and where the sum of angles in a triangle is not equal to 180 degrees, and learn why we should care about these creations of the human mind.
The Traveling Salesman Problem (Thursday, October 13)Speaker: Alex Popkin
As you go through your years at Vanderbilt, many of you are probably looking ahead to the careers you will pursue after college. We at the math department wish to encourage students to investigate a wide range of jobs, including that of traveling salesman. In this week's talk we'll look at one of the biggest challenges faced by those who choose this career, the problem of finding the shortest route through a certain number of cities. Finally, we'll see how the traveling salesman problem is connected to another math problem so difficult that you could win $1,000,000 if you solve it.
The Simpsons Rule: A Math Lesson from Springfield (Tuesday, October 18) SPECIAL
DAY!Speaker: Dan Biebighauser
The Simpsons is the longest-running sitcom of all time. You know it's a funny show, but did you know that the head writer has a degree in mathematics from Harvard? In this week's talk, we will take a tour of the mathematics of Springfield (including Fermat's Last Theorem and the fourth dimension), with a little help from Homer and Bart.
Mathematical Influences in Art, from Picasso to Escher to Man
Ray
(Thursday, October 27)Speaker: Fumiko Futamura
What comes to mind when you ponder math and art? ... Escher? Perspective? Neon-colored computer models of hypercubes? How about Albrecht Dürer? Gustav Klimt? Marcel Duchamp? Pablo Picasso? Man Ray? Bridget Riley? Bernar Venet? We will explore the many, many connections found throughout art history, from Moorish tesselations to Renaissance perspective to Cubism to Op art to Contemporary art.
Doubling the watermelon with Banach and Tarski
(Thursday, November 3)Speaker: Peter Hinow
Suppose you are given a nice round and juicy watermelon and a sharp knife. Can you cut the watermelon into five pieces and reassemble these pieces into two exact copies of the original watermelon? Make a guess! Make a brave guess. Make a guess that defies all intuition and common sense! And just when you have convinced yourself finally and ultimately that this is completely impossible -- then come to this talk.
Mathematics in Games (Thursday, November 10)Speaker: Justin Fitzpatrick
Some games have no math component, like chess. Other games are completely mathematical, like Nim. In this talk, we'll look at why these games are less compelling than games which are partially mathematical and partially "luck." We call these games "equity-based," and they include backgammon and the current sensation of poker. In addition to solving Nim, we'll talk about a few mathematical concepts of play in these games, including how tournament play differs from regular play, and the (mathematical) necessity of bluffing in poker. Hopefully there will be additional time at the end of the talk for Q&A for those of you who have (at least somewhat) math-related questions about these games.
Exploratory Analysis of Survival Patterns for Passengers
on the Titanic (Tuesday, November 15) SPECIAL
DAY!Speaker: Frank E Harrell Jr, Chair, Department of Biostatistics, School of Medicine
This talk consists of an interactive exploration of survival tendencies for passengers on the Titanic. The analysis answers such questions as "were women and children first?" and "what is a child?". Modern statistical computing and statistical graphics will be used to understand patterns in the data.
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Last Updated
November 11, 2005