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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, 3:30 PM – 4:00 PM
* '''When:''' Thursdays 4:00-4:30pm
* '''Where:''' Van Vleck, 9th floor lounge (unless otherwise announced)
* '''Where:''' Van Vleck, 9th floor lounge (unless otherwise announced)
* '''Organizers:''' Daniel Hast, Ryan Julian, 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.


The schedule of talks from past semesters can be found [[AMS Student Chapter Seminar, previous semesters|here]].
The schedule of talks from past semesters can be found [[AMS Student Chapter Seminar, previous semesters|here]].


== Fall 2016 ==
== Fall 2025 ==


=== October 12, Soumya Sankar ===
<center>
 
{| cellspacing="5" cellpadding="14" border="0" style="color:black; font-size:120%"
Title: Primes of certain forms and covering systems
|-
 
| align="center" width="200" bgcolor="#D0D0D0" |'''Date'''
Abstract: A lot of classical questions revolve around primes of the form 2^n + k, where k is an odd integer. I will talk about such primes, or the lack thereof, and use this to convert coffee into covering systems. Time permitting, I'll talk about a few cool results and conjectures related to the notion of covering systems.
| align="center" width="200" bgcolor="#A6B658" |'''Speaker'''
 
| align="center" width="300" bgcolor="#BCD2EE" |'''Title'''
=== October 19, Daniel Hast ===
| align="center" width="400" bgcolor="#BCD2EE" |'''Abstract'''
 
|-
Title: A combinatorial lemma in linear algebra
| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | September 4
 
| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | Jacob Wood
Abstract: I'll talk about a fun little lemma in linear algebra and its combinatorial interpretation. (It might be "well-known" to someone, but I'd never heard of it before.) If there's time, I'll discuss some possible generalizations.
| 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.
=== October 26, Brandon Alberts ===
|-
 
| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | September 11
Title: An Introduction to Matroids
| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | Sapir Ben-Shahar
 
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | More on Matroids
Abstract: What if you wanted to do linear algebra, but couldn't use addition or scalar multiplication? Can we still have a notion of independence and bases? The answer is yes, and these are called matroids. Not only will I introduce matroids, but I will give an example that shows not all matroids arise from vector spaces.
| 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.
 
|-
=== November 2, Vlad Matei ===
| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | September 18
 
| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | -
Title: Hadamard Matrices
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
 
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
Abstract: A Hadamard matrix is a square matrix whose entries are either +1 or −1 and whose rows are mutually orthogonal. The most important open question in the theory of Hadamard matrices is that of existence. The Hadamard conjecture proposes that a Hadamard matrix of order 4k exists for every positive integer k. The Hadamard conjecture has also been attributed to Paley, although it was considered implicitly by others prior to Paley's work.
|-
 
| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | September 25
=== November 9, David Bruce ===
| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | -
 
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
Title: Some Numbers Are Sometimes Bigger Than Others (Sometimes...)
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
 
|-
Abstract: I will write down two numbers and show that one of them is larger than the other.
| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | October 2
 
| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | -
=== November 16, Solly Parenti ===
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
 
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
Title: The Congruent Number Problem
|-
 
| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | October 9
Abstract: To add to the over-romanticization of number theory, I will talk about a simple to state problem about triangles that quickly leads into very difficult open problems in modern number theory.
| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | -
 
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
=== November 30, Iván Ongay Valverde ===
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
 
|-
Title: Games for fun, games to change the world, games, games, games
| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | October 16
 
| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | -
Abstract: We will talk about infinite perfect information games. We will discuss different uses for these games, and we will see that some of them have interesting information for us that helps determine some properties of subsets of reals. Can games change the world? Can we use them in a non-intrusive way? Join to have fun with games, since they are games!
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
 
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
=== December 7, Will Mitchell ===
|-
 
| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | October 23
Title: An unsolved isomorphism problem from plane geometry
| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | -
 
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
Abstract: A geometric n-configuration is a collection of points and lines in the Euclidean plane such that each point lies on exactly n lines and each line passes through n points. While the study of 3-configurations dates to the nineteenth century, the first example of a 4-configuration appeared only in 1990.  I will say a few things about 4-configurations and state an unsolved problem, and I hope that someone in the audience will decide to work on it.  There will be nice pictures and a shout-out to the singular value decomposition.
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
 
|-
=== December 14, Paul Tveite ===
| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | October 30
| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | -
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
|-
| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | November 6
| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | -
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
|-
| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | November 13
| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | -
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
|-
| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | November 20
| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | Emma Hayes
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | An Introduction to My Favorite PDE
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | TBA
|-
| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | November 27
| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | THANKSGIVING
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | NONE
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | NONE
|-
| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | December 4
| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | -
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
|}
</center>

Latest revision as of 21:36, 18 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 4 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 11 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 18 - - -
September 25 - - -
October 2 - - -
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 - - -
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