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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, 3:00 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:''' Laura Cladek, Ryan Julian, Xianghong Chen, Daniel Hast
* '''Organizers:''' Ivan Aidun, Alex Bonat, Kaiyi Huang, Ethan Schondorf


Everyone is welcome to give a talk. To sign up, please contact 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.


==Spring 2015==
The schedule of talks from past semesters can be found [[AMS Student Chapter Seminar, previous semesters|here]].


===January 28, Moisés Herradón===
== Fall 2025 ==


Title: Winning games and taking names
<center>
 
{| cellspacing="5" cellpadding="14" border="0" style="color:black; font-size:120%"
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="#D0D0D0" |'''Date'''
===February 11, Becky Eastham===
| align="center" width="200" bgcolor="#A6B658" |'''Speaker'''
 
| align="center" width="300" bgcolor="#BCD2EE" |'''Title'''
Title: A generalization of van der Waerden numbers: (a, b) triples and (a_1, a_2, ..., a_n) (n + 1)-tuples
| align="center" width="400" bgcolor="#BCD2EE" |'''Abstract'''
 
|-
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="#E0E0E0" | September 11
 
| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | Jacob Wood
===February 18, Solly Parenti===
| 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.
Title: Chebyshev's Bias
|-
 
| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | September 18
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="#C6D46E" | Sapir Ben-Shahar
 
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | More on Matroids
===February 25, David Bruce===
| 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.
 
|-
Title: Mean, Median, and Mode - Well Actually Just Median
| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | September 25
 
| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | Taylor Tan
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.
| 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).
===March 4, Vlad Matei===
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.
Title: TBA
This is meant for a general audience, so I will try to give the intuition with pictures.  
 
|-
Abstract: TBA
| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | October 2
 
| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | -
==Fall 2014==
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
 
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
===September 25, Vladimir Sotirov===
|-
 
| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | October 9
Title: [[Media:Compact-openTalk.pdf|The compact open topology: what is it really?]]
| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | -
 
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
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.
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
 
|-
===October 8, David Bruce===
| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | October 16
 
| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | -
Title: Hex on the Beach
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
 
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
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!*
|-
 
| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | October 23
===October 22, Eva Elduque===
| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | -
 
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
Title: The fold and one cut problem
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
 
|-
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.
| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | October 30
 
| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | -
===November 5, Megan Maguire===
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
 
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
Title: Train tracks on surfaces
|-
 
| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | November 6
Abstract: What is a train track, mathematically speaking? Are they interesting? Why are they interesting? Come find out!
| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | -
 
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
===November 19, Adrian Tovar-Lopez===
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
 
|-
Title:  Hodgkin and Huxley equations of a single neuron
| bgcolor="#E0E0E0" | November 13
 
| bgcolor="#C6D46E" | -
===December 3, Zachary Charles===
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
 
| bgcolor="#BCE2FE" | -
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?
|-
| 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 03:07, 24 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 - - -
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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