AMS Student Chapter Seminar: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 18:33, 29 September 2025

The AMS Student Chapter Seminar (aka Donut Seminar) is an informal, graduate student seminar on a wide range of mathematical topics. The goal of the seminar is to promote community building and give graduate students an opportunity to communicate fun, accessible math to their peers in a stress-free (but not sugar-free) environment. Pastries (usually donuts) will be provided.

When: Thursdays 4:00-4:30pm
Where: Van Vleck, 9th floor lounge (unless otherwise announced)
Organizers: Ivan Aidun, Alex Bonat, Kaiyi Huang, Ethan Schondorf

Everyone is welcome to give a talk. To sign up, please contact one of the organizers with a title and abstract. Talks are 25 minutes long and should avoid assuming significant mathematical background beyond first-year graduate courses.

The schedule of talks from past semesters can be found here.

Fall 2025

Date	Speaker	Title	Abstract
September 11	Jacob Wood	Realizing Matroids	A matroid is a combinatorial object encoding notions of "independence". For example, given a set of vectors in a vector space, there is an associated matroid encoding which subsets of those vectors are linearly independent of one another. A matroid arising in this way is called "realizable", but it turns out some abstract matroids cannot be given in this way. In this talk, I'll introduce matroids and talk about how to find these unrealizable matroids.
September 18	Sapir Ben-Shahar	More on Matroids	Essentially a continuation of Jacob's talk from last week, I'll give another perspective on matroids, including talking about other ways in which we can (sometimes) represent them.
September 25	Taylor Tan	Dispersive Equations	As a model case I will focus on the free Schrodinger in R and the torus and compare the different dispersive behaviors (or lack thereof). On the line, wave packet spread gives us the expected decay readily. On the tori, the story is more subtle due to constructive interference coming from the major arcs of a quadratic Weyl sum. This is meant for a general audience, so I will try to give the intuition with pictures.
October 2	Dhruv Kulshreshtha	Reducing the infinite to the finite	Have you ever wondered how many colors are needed to color a countably infinite map? Or why statements that are satisfied by the complex numbers are also satisfied by all algebraically closed fields of sufficiently large prime characteristic? In this talk, we will explore the Compactness Theorem, which resolves many such interesting questions! No background in logic is necessary.
October 9	-	-	-
October 16	-	-	-
October 23	-	-	-
October 30	-	-	-
November 6	-	-	-
November 13	-	-	-
November 20	Emma Hayes	An Introduction to My Favorite PDE	TBA
November 27	THANKSGIVING	NONE	NONE
December 4	-	-	-

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-The AMS Student Chapter Seminar is an informal, graduate student-run seminar on a wide range of mathematical topics. Pastries (usually donuts) will be provided.
+The AMS Student Chapter Seminar (aka Donut Seminar) is an informal, graduate student seminar on a wide range of mathematical topics. The goal of the seminar is to promote community building and give graduate students an opportunity to communicate fun, accessible math to their peers in a stress-free (but not sugar-free) environment. Pastries (usually donuts) will be provided.
-* '''When:''' Wednesdays, 3:00 PM – 3:30 PM
+* '''When:''' Thursdays 4:00-4:30pm
-* '''Where:''' Van Vleck, 9th floor lounge
+* '''Where:''' Van Vleck, 9th floor lounge (unless otherwise announced)
-* '''Organizers:''' Daniel Hast, Ryan Julian, Laura Cladek, Cullen McDonald, Zachary Charles
+* '''Organizers:''' Ivan Aidun, Alex Bonat, Kaiyi Huang, Ethan Schondorf
-Everyone is welcome to give a talk. To sign up, please contact one of the organizers with a title and abstract. Talks are 30 minutes long and should avoid assuming significant mathematical background beyond first-year graduate courses.
+Everyone is welcome to give a talk. To sign up, please contact one of the organizers with a title and abstract. Talks are 25 minutes long and should avoid assuming significant mathematical background beyond first-year graduate courses.
-== Fall 2015 ==
+The schedule of talks from past semesters can be found [[AMS Student Chapter Seminar, previous semesters|here]].
-==Spring 2015==
+== Fall 2025 ==
-===January 28, Moisés Herradón===
+<center>
+{| cellspacing="5" cellpadding="14" border="0" style="color:black; font-size:120%"
-Title: Winning games and taking names
+|-
+| align="center" width="200" bgcolor="#D0D0D0" |'''Date'''
-Abstract:  So let’s say we’re already amazing at playing one game (any game!) at a time and we now we need to play several games at once, to keep it challenging. We will see that doing this results in us being able to define an addition on the collection of all games, and that it actually turns this collection into a Group. I will talk about some of the wonders that lie within the group. Maybe lions? Maybe a field containing both the real numbers and the ordinals? For sure it has to be one of these two!
+| align="center" width="200" bgcolor="#A6B658" |'''Speaker'''
+| align="center" width="300" bgcolor="#BCD2EE" |'''Title'''
-===February 11, Becky Eastham===
+| align="center" width="400" bgcolor="#BCD2EE" |'''Abstract'''
+|-
-Title: A generalization of van der Waerden numbers: (a, b) triples and (a_1, a_2, ..., a_n) (n + 1)-tuples
+| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | September 11
+| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | Jacob Wood
-Abstract: Van der Waerden defined w(k; r) to be the least positive integer such that for every r-coloring of the integers from 1 to w(k; r), there is a monochromatic arithmetic progression of length k.  He proved that w(k; r) exists for all positive k, r.  I will discuss the case where r = 2.  These numbers are notoriously hard to calculate: the first 6 of these are 1, 3, 9, 35, 178, and 1132, but no others are known.  I will discuss properties of a generalization of these numbers, (a_1, a_2, ..., a_n) (n + 1)-tuples, which are sets of the form {d, a_1x + d, a_2x + 2d, ..., a_nx + nd}, for d, x positive natural numbers.
+| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | Realizing Matroids
+| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | A matroid is a combinatorial object encoding notions of "independence".  For example, given a set of vectors in a vector space, there is an associated matroid encoding which subsets of those vectors are linearly independent of one another.  A matroid arising in this way is called "realizable", but it turns out some abstract matroids cannot be given in this way.  In this talk, I'll introduce matroids and talk about how to find these unrealizable matroids.
-===February 18, Solly Parenti===
+|-
+| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | September 18
-Title: Chebyshev's Bias
+| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | Sapir Ben-Shahar
+| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | More on Matroids
-Abstract: Euclid told us that there are infinitely many primes.  Dirichlet answered the question of how primes are distributed among residue classes.  This talk addresses the question of "Ya, but really, how are the primes distributed among residue classes?"  Chebyshev noted in 1853 that there seems to be more primes congruent to 3 mod 4 than their are primes congruent to 1 mod 4.  It turns out, he was right, wrong, and everything in between.  No analytic number theory is presumed for this talk, as none is known by the speaker.
+| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | Essentially a continuation of Jacob's talk from last week, I'll give another perspective on matroids, including talking about other ways in which we can (sometimes) represent them.
+|-
-===February 25, David Bruce===
+| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | September 25
+| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | Taylor Tan
-Title: Mean, Median, and Mode - Well Actually Just Median
+| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | Dispersive Equations
+| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | As a model case I will focus on the free Schrodinger in R and the torus and compare the different dispersive behaviors (or lack thereof).
-Abstract: Given a finite set of numbers there are many different ways to measure the center of the set. Three of the more common measures, familiar to any middle school students, are: mean, median, mode. This talk will focus on the concept of the median, and why in many ways it's sweet. In particular, we will explore how we can extend the notion of a median to higher dimensions, and apply it to create more robust statistics. It will be awesome, and there will be donuts.
+On the line, wave packet spread gives us the expected decay readily.
+On the tori, the story is more subtle due to constructive interference coming from the major arcs of a quadratic Weyl sum.
-===March 4, Jing Hao===
+This is meant for a general audience, so I will try to give the intuition with pictures.
+|-
-Title: Error Correction Codes
+| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | October 2
+| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | Dhruv Kulshreshtha
-Abstract: In the modern world, many communication channels are subject to noise, and thus errors happen. To help the codes auto-correct themselves, more bits are added to the codes to make them more different from each other and therefore easier to tell apart. The major object we study is linear codes. They have nice algebraic structure embedded, and we can apply well-known algebraic results to construct 'nice' codes. This talk will touch on the basics of coding theory, and introduce some famous codes in the coding world, including several prize problems yet to be solved!
+| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | Reducing the infinite to the finite
+| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | Have you ever wondered how many colors are needed to color a countably infinite map? Or why statements that are satisfied by the complex numbers are also satisfied by all algebraically closed fields of sufficiently large prime characteristic?
-===March 10 (Tuesday), Nathan Clement===
+In this talk, we will explore the Compactness Theorem, which resolves many such interesting questions! No background in logic is necessary.
+|-
-''Note: This week's seminar will be on Tuesday at 3:30 instead of the usual time.''
+| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | October 9
+| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | -
-Title: Two Solutions, not too Technical, to a Problem to which the Answer is Two
+| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
+| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
-Abstract: A classical problem in Algebraic Geometry is this: Given four pairwise skew lines, how many other lines intersect all of them. I will present some (two) solutions to this problem. One is more classical and ad hoc and the other introduces the Grassmannian variety/manifold and a little intersection theory.
+|-
+| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | October 16
-===March 25, Eric Ramos===
+| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | -
+| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
-Title: Braids, Knots and Representations
+| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
+|-
-Abstract: In the 1920's Artin defined the braid group, B_n, in an attempt to understand knots in a more algebraic setting. A braid is a certain arrangement of strings in three-dimensional space. It is a celebrated theorem of Alexander that every knot is obtainable from a braid by identifying the endpoints of each string. Because of this correspondence, the Jones and Alexander polynomials, two of the most important knot invariants, can be described completely using the braid group. In fact, Jones was able to show that knot invariants can often be realized as characters of special representations of the braid group.
+| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | October 23
+| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | -
-The purpose of this talk is to give a very light introduction to braid and knot theory. The majority of the talk will be comprised of drawing pictures, and nothing will be treated rigorously.
+| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
+| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
-===April 8, James Waddington===
+|-
+| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | October 30
-Title: Goodstein's Theorem
+| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | -
+| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
-Abstract: One of the most important results in the development of mathematics are
+| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
-Gödel's Incompleteness theorems. The first incompleteness theorem shows that no
+|-
-list of axioms one could provide could extend number theory to a complete and
+| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | November 6
-consistent theory. The second showed that one such statement was no
+| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | -
-axiomatization of number theory could be used to prove its own consistency.
+| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
-Needless to say this was not viewed as a very natural independent statement
+| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
-from arithmetic.
+|-
+| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | November 13
-Examples of non-metamathematical results that were independent of PA, but true
+| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | -
-of second order number theory, were not discovered until much later. Within a
+| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
-short time of each three such statements that were more "natural" were
+| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
-discovered. The Paris–Harrington Theorem, which was about a statement in Ramsey
+|-
-theory, the Kirby–Paris theorem, which showed the independence of Goodstein's
+| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | November 20
-theorem from Peano Arithmetic and the Kruskal's tree theorem, a statement about
+| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | Emma Hayes
-finite trees.
+| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | An Introduction to My Favorite PDE
+| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | TBA
-In this talk I shall discuss Goodstein's theorem which discusses the end
+|-
-behavior of a certain "Zero player" game about k-nary expansions of numbers.
+| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | November 27
-I will also give some elements of the proof of the Kirby–Paris theorem.
+| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | THANKSGIVING
+| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | NONE
-===April 22, William Cocke===
+| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | NONE
+|-
-Title: Finite Groups aren't too Square
+| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | December 4
+| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | -
-Abstract: We investigate how many non-p-th powers a group can have for a given prime p.
+| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
-We will show using some elementary group theory, that if np(G) is the number of non-p-th powers
+| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
-in a group G, then G has order bounded by np(G)(np(G)+1). Time permitting we will show this bound
+|}
-is strict and that mentioned results involving more than finite groups.
+</center>
-==Fall 2014==
-===September 25, Vladimir Sotirov===
-Title: [[Media:Compact-openTalk.pdf|The compact open topology: what is it really?]]
-Abstract:  The compact-open topology on the space C(X,Y) of continuous functions from X to Y is mysteriously generated by declaring that for each compact subset K of X and each open subset V of Y, the continous functions f: X->Y conducting K inside V constitute an open set. In this talk, I will explain the universal property that uniquely determines the compact-open topology, and sketch a pretty constellation of little-known but elementary facts from domain theory that dispell the mystery of the compact-open topology's definition.
-===October 8, David Bruce===
-Title: Hex on the Beach
-Abstract: The game of Hex is a two player game played on a hexagonal grid attributed in part to John Nash. (This is the game he is playing in /A Beautiful Mind./) Despite being relatively easy to pick up, and pretty hard to master, this game has surprising connections to some interesting mathematics. This talk will introduce the game of Hex, and then explore some of these connections. *As it is a lot more fun once you've actually played Hex feel free to join me at 3:00pm on the 9th floor to actually play a few games of Hex!*
-===October 22, Eva Elduque===
-Title: The fold and one cut problem
-Abstract: What shapes can we get by folding flat a piece of paper and making (only) one complete straight cut? The answer is surprising: We can cut out any shape drawn with straight line segments. In the talk, we will discuss the two methods of approaching this problem, focusing on the straight skeleton method, the most intuitive of the two.
-===November 5, Megan Maguire===
-Title: Train tracks on surfaces
-Abstract: What is a train track, mathematically speaking? Are they interesting? Why are they interesting? Come find out!
-===November 19, Adrian Tovar-Lopez===
-Title:  Hodgkin and Huxley equations of a single neuron
-===December 3, Zachary Charles===
-Title:  Addition chains: To exponentiation and beyond
-Abstract: An addition chain is a sequence of numbers starting at one, such that every number is the sum of two previous numbers. What is the shortest chain ending at a number n? While this is already difficult, we will talk about how addition chains answer life's difficult questions, including: How do we compute 2^4? What can the Ancient Egyptians teach us about elliptic curve cryptography? What about subtraction?

AMS Student Chapter Seminar: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 18:33, 29 September 2025

Fall 2025

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