Sept 10 -- Student/Faculty Luncheon
"The Symmedian World"
Michael Henle - Department of Mathematics
Wilder 115 at 12:15
Mathematics, like many other subjects over the last century, has become fragmented into many, many sub-disciplines and specialties. This talk introduces one such area, a sub-sub-sub-part of geometry with a surprising military application.
Oct 8 -- Student/Faculty Luncheon
"On Leadership" (and its connection to fractal Quaternion Julia sets)
James Walsh - Department of Mathematics
Wilder 112 at 12:15
What connection could possibly exist between effective leadership and 4-dimensional fractal Quaternion Julia sets? Come to this luncheon to find out! We will also provide evidence in support of the GREAT FRACTAL CONJECTURE.
Nov 5 -- Student/Faculty Luncheon
TBA
Wilder 115 at 12:15
Nov 11 -- Vance Lecture
In Pursuit of the Salesman: Mathematics at the Limits of Computation
William Cook
Chandler Family Professor
School of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
7:30 PM in Craig Auditorium
The traveling salesman problem, or TSP for short, is easy to state: given a number of cities along with the cost of travel between each pair of them, find the cheapest way to visit them all and return to your starting point. Easy to state, but difficult to solve! Despite decades of research by top applied mathematicians around the world, in general it is not known how to significantly improve upon simple brute-force checking. It is a real possibility that there may never exist an efficient method that is guaranteed to solve every instance of the problem. This is a deep mathematical question: Is there an efficient solution method or not? The topic goes to the core of complexity theory concerning the limits of feasible computation. For the stout-hearted who would like to tackle the general version of the TSP, the Clay Mathematics Institute will hand over a $1,000,000 prize to anyone who can either produce an efficient general method or prove an impossibility result.
The complexity question that is the subject of the Clay Prize is the Holy Grail of traveling-salesman-problem research and we may be far from seeing its resolution. This is not to say that mathematicians have thus far come away empty-handed. Within the theoretical community the problem has led to a large number of results and conjectures that are both beautiful and deep. In the arena of exact computation, an 85,900-city challenge problem was solved in 2006, when the optimal tour was pulled out of a mind-boggling number of candidates in a computation that took the equivalent of 136 years on top-of-the-line computer workstations. On the practical side, solution methods are used to compute optimal or near-optimal tours for a host of applied problems on a daily basis, from genome sequencing to arranging music on iPods.
In this talk we discuss the history, applications, and computation of this fascinating problem.
TBA
Wilder 115 at 12:15
February 17 -- Tamura/Lilly Lecture Series
"The Calculus of Friendship"
Steven Strogatz
Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Theoretical
and Applied Mechanics
Department of Mathematics
Cornell University
7:30 PM - Craig Auditorium
In this public lecture, Professor Strogatz tells the story of his extraordinary connection with his high school calculus teacher, Mr. Don Joffray, as chronicled through more than thirty years of letters between them. What makes their relationship unique is that it is based almost entirely on a shared love of calculus. For them, calculus is more than a branch of mathematics; it is a game they love playing together, a constant when all else is in flux. The teacher goes from the prime of his career to retirement, competes in whitewater kayaking at the international level, and loses a son. The student matures from high school math geek to college professor, suffers the sudden death of a parent, and blunders into a marriage destined to fail. Yet through it all they take refuge in the haven of calculus . . . until a day comes when calculus is no longer enough. Like calculus itself, this lecture is an exploration of change. It's about the transformation that takes place in a student's heart, as he and his teacher reverse roles, as they age, as they are buffeted by life itself. It is intended for a general audience, and especially anyone whose life has been changed by a mentor. (It also includes some nifty calculus problems.)
