The What is ...? seminar will run again in Summer 2017. Professors Vitaly Bergelson and Daniel Shapiro serve as coordinators/mediators.
The seminar's main goal is to expose culturally ambitious participants to some mathematical notions not taught in standard courses. These topics form an important part of mathematical folklore, and may prove useful for doing research and enhancing teaching.
Lectures will be given mostly by graduate and undergraduate student participants.
2017 Talks
We will meet in Scott Lab room N050 at 4:00 PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays during the Summer Semester.
- Tue June 20: Caleb Dilsavor, What is Luroth Expansion? [pdf]
- Thu June 22: Maxwell Budd, What are Rademacher Functions? [pdf]
- Tue June 27: Nik Henderson,
What is a Weierstrass Point? [pdf] - Thu June 29: Aidan Howells, What are Cassini Ovals? [pdf]
- Thu July 6: Sohail Farhangi, What is an Engel series? [pdf]
- Tue July 11: Dan Brogan, What is an Attractor? [pdf]
- Thu July 13: Joshua Yee, What is Topological Entropy? [pdf]
- Tue July 18: Miles Calabresi, What is Crofton's Formula? [pdf]
- Thu July 20, Vilas Winstein, What is the Lambda Calculus? [pdf]
- Tue July 25, Joseph Vandehey, What is the Hot Spot Theorem? [pdf]
Previous What is ...? talks
2016
- Thu June 16: Carl Ahlborg, What is Orientation?
- Tue June 21: Miles Calabresi, What is Elliptic Curve Cryptography? [pdf]
- Thu June 23: Daniel Glasscock, What is an elliptic integral addition formula? [pdf]
- Tue June 28: Andreu Ferre, What is Monsky's Theorem? [pdf]
- Thu June 30: Anthony Ciavarella, What is Q Deformed Calculus? [pdf]
- Tue July 5: Josh Yee, What is Chaotic Behavior in Iterated Function Systems?
- Thu July 7: Charles Baker, What is von Neumann's Minimax Theorem?
- Tue July 12: Nik Henderson, What is Zeckendorf's Theorem? [pdf]
- Thu July 14: Aidan Howells, What is Riemann Integration? [pdf]
- Tue July 19: George Hauser, What is the Erdos Distinct Distances Problem?
- Thu July 21: Nick Hemleben, What is the real projective space?
- Tue July 26: Simon Zhang, What is the Veronese map? [pdf]
- Thu July 28: Michael Crawshaw
2015
- Thu June 18: Daniel Glasscock, What is the Kakeya needle problem? [pdf]
- Tue June 23: Mike Steward, What are Integer-Valued Polynomials? [pdf]
- Thu June 25: Gabriel Khan, What is the Ricci Flow? [pdf]
- Tue June 30: Boming Jia, What is the Denjoy Integral? [pdf]
- Tue July 7: Nick Hemleben, What is the Four Color Theorem? [pdf]
- Thurs July 9: Carl Ahlborg, What are Kissing Circles? [pdf]
- Tue July 14: Ricky Magner, What is Liouville's Theorem on Integration? [pdf]
- Thu July 16: Allison Paul & Sandeep Silwal, What is Waring's Problem? [pdf]
- Tue July 21: Ji Hoon Chun, What is the Busemann-Petty Problem? [pdf]
- Thu July 23: Shenhui Liu, What are Kloosterman Sums? [pdf]
Early talks can be found at What is ...? Seminar Previous Talks.
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