AMS Student Chapter Seminar

General Information: AMS Student Chapter Seminar will take place on Wednesday at 3:30 in the 9th floor lounge area. Talks should be of interest to the general math community, and generally will not run longer than 30 minutes. Everyone is welcome to give a talk, please just sign up on this page. Alternatively we will also sign interested people up at the seminar itself. There will generally be donut provided, although the snack may vary from week to week.

To sign up please provide your name and a title. Abstracts are welcome but optional.

September 25, Vladimir Sotirov

Title: 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

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?