Math Club Colloquium

Welcome to the Math Club Colloquium pages! Here you will find a record of colloquium talks dating back to 2010. Talks are accessible to a broad audience of students and faculty in mathematics and related disciplines. It is usually held during common hour on Tuesdays from 12:30 pm - 1:30 pm, but the day, time and location does change so please note the details listed by each talk. 

Academic Year 2018 - 2019

Oct 25 and 30, 2018: Kishore Marathe (Brooklyn College)

12:30 pm - 1:30 pm

1141 Ingersoll Hall

Title: What Is Physical Mathematics?

Abstract: Physical mathematics is a new and very active area of research at the interface of physics and mathematics. However, its roots go back to antiquity. We will discuss the ancient origins of this subject and highlight some important achievements in this area leading up to current developments. They have given us surprising new results and new perspectives on old results in mathematics starting with results from experimental and theoretical physics. A special session on "Physical Mathematics" was organized by Professor Kauffman and myself at the joint International meeting of the AMS and TIMC held at BHU, India, in December 2016. The theme of the 2017 Arbeitstagung honoring the work of Yuri Manin at MPIM, Bonn was "Physical Mathematics."

Nov 29, 2018: Heidi Goodson (Brooklyn College)

12:30 pm - 2:00 pm

1146 Ingersoll Hall

Title: Elliptic Curves over Finite Fields

Abstract: Elliptic curves are solution sets to cubic equations in two variables. Questions of how to find, count, and characterize points on elliptic curves have been studied since the days of Diophantus. Nearly 2,000 years later, the great mathematician Joe Silverman wrote, "the theory of elliptic curves is rich, varied, and amazingly vast." In this talk, I will define what it means to be a point over a finite field and answer the question "How many?" We'll discuss estimates, exact values, and surprising trends as the order of the field varies!

Dec 4, 2018: David Aulicino (Brooklyn College)

12:30 pm - 1:30 pm

1141 Ingersoll Hall

Title: Vertex-to-Self Trajectories on the Dodecahedron

Abstract: Starting at a vertex of a Platonic solid, is it possible to walk on the surface of it in a straight line so that we return to the vertex we started at without passing through another? Surprisingly, the answer depends on which Platonic solid we consider. We will review what the Platonic solids are and explain how to solve this problem for the tetrahedron. There will be lots of pictures, animations, and 3D models. Students are encouraged to bring scissors and tape!

Mar 5, 2019: Chaya Norton (University of Montreal)

12:30 pm - 1:30 pm

1105 Ingersoll Hall

Title: What is Moduli Space?

Abstract: Consider the collection of triangles in the Euclidean plane up to congruence. Three non-collinear points in the plane determines a unique triangle containing these points as its vertices. The classification problem is to understand which collection of points give rise to equivalent triangles. A moduli space is a geometric "space," which describes the solution to a geometric classification problem. The property of solving a geometric classification problem implies that points in the moduli space correspond to unique objects considered up to the equivalence. More importantly mathematicians would like the moduli space to be equipped with a geometry which describes how the objects vary, namely nearby points correspond to objects which are small variations of each other. We will consider the simple moduli problem of equivalent triangles in order to demonstrate the notion of a moduli space and basic questions one may ask about the space constructed, as well as the complications that arise from automorphisms of the objects.

Mar 19, 2019: Pearce Washabaugh (TrueFit)

12:30-2:00 p.m

1146 Ingersoll Hall

Title: Choosing a Career With a Math Degree

The Math Department along with the Math Club hosted this event. This discussion was conducted by Pearce Washabaugh, who received his Ph.D. in math with Professor Stephen Preston. Washabaugh is now working as a senior data scientist at TrueFit. For more information about the talk, see the abstract below. Pizza and refreshments were served.

Abstract: It is not uncommon for mathematics students of all levels to have anxiety about finding a job. However, businesses desperately need people that can take in a large number of details to frame a problem, abstract away unnecessary details to get to the heart of a problem, and combine the tools and data at hand to arrive at a solution. You will note that these are precisely the skills that mathematics students are taught. In this talk, we will work on closing the gap between school and business. We will discuss my path from math student to data scientist, as well as the advice I got and lessons I have learned about getting a job in general.

Mar 14: Pi Day Celebration

12:30-2:00 p.m

1146 Ingersoll Hall

Pi Day is March 14, 2019. The Math Department and the Math Club hosted a Pi Day celebration. At 12:30 p.m. free pizza was served. Then at 12:45 p.m., an integration bee took place (this was a tournament style competition where two people try and solve an integral in a timed race). The winner of this tournament received a $50 Amazon gift card and the runner-up got the book 17 Equations That Changed The World, by Ian Stewart. After the competition, Assistant Professor Diana Hubbard gave a talk on how you can find Pi using just a spreadsheet and the Pythagorean Theorem. At around 2 p.m., dessert pies were served. For those who attended, this was a fun day of math and pies.

Apr 11, 2019: Stephen Preston (Brooklyn College)

12:30 pm - 1:30 pm

1146 Ingersoll Hall

Title: The Geometric Approach to Fluid Mechanics

Abstract: On a curved surface, the shortest path between two points is not a line but rather a curve called a geodesic. The Gaussian curvature of a surface is a function on the surface that describes to what extent the surface looks like a sphere (positive curvature) or a hyperbolic saddle (negative curvature). Under positive curvature, geodesics may spread apart but eventually come together, while under negative curvature they diverge exponentially. The same ideas extend to higher dimensions and even infinitely many dimensions. In 1966 Vladimir Arnold showed how to write the Euler equations for a perfect fluid (no viscosity, incompressible, no external forces) as a geodesic equation in an infinite-dimensional manifold. He then computed some curvatures and showed that they tended to be negative, which can be viewed as an explanation of why weather prediction is hard. I will discuss the basics of differential geometry and how some of this works for fluids.

Apr 30, 2019: Jeff Suzuki (Brooklyn College)

12:30 pm - 1:30 pm

1105 Ingersoll Hall

Title: Patently Mathematical, Or How I Lost a Billion Dollars in My Spare Time

Abstract: Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door. But the garage workshop, with the lone genius struggling to create a device that will change the world, is mostly a thing of the past. Today, building a better mousetrap requires the resources of an industrial giant and a laboratory with hundreds or even thousands of researchers. Inventions based on mathematics are the exception, for mathematical invention requires nothing more costly than a notebook and pencil. And while you cannot patent a mathematical formula, you can patent a device that uses a mathematical formula. In some cases, the mathematics is dauntingly complex, but in a surprising number of cases, the mathematics is so very elementary that any mathematics student could have secured the patent. We will take a look at the mathematics behind some recent patents, in fields ranging from web services, to online dating, to career advising. Along the way, we will confront an important problem: Patents are issued for devices, not for how the device is used. But the heart and soul of mathematics is its generalizability, so issuing a patent based on a mathematical formula risks giving the patent holder a stranglehold on every industry: Google could demand royalties from eHarmony, or IBM could try to obtain a cease and desist order against the NSA. We will close with some thoughts on how to improve the patent system's approach to mathematical inventions.