Department of Mathematics and Statistics
UMKC (University of Missouri - Kansas City)
Expository Talks Series, and
Video/Film Series
Semester: Fall 2007 - 20th Year!
Location: Haag Hall, Room 309 (unless otherwise indicated below)
Day & Time: Friday, 4-4:50 pm (talks), 4-5:00 pm (videos)
Campus Map for Talks (PDF Format)
Contact: Richard Delaware,
delawarer@umkc.edu
On This Page:
On Separate Pages:
GO TO UMKC Department of Mathematics & Statistics
Dates, Titles, Speakers (with Abstracts & Posters as available)
Friday Aug. 31
Expository Talks Series
Sums and Products -
Counting, Drawing, and Estimating
Alex Iosevich, Mathematics, University of Missouri - Columbia
[CLICK on poster image to download poster. Pass it on!]
[Campus Map for Talks (PDF Format)]
If A is a subset of the integers or integers-modulo-a-prime-number p,
is it possible that both the set of pair-wise products and
the set of pair-wise sums of A is small? This innocent looking
question has led to tremendous amount of activity in recent years in
several areas of mathematics. We shall discuss some elementary
approaches to this question and their consequences.
BACK to Top of Page
Friday Sept. 7
Expository Talks Series
Mass in Hyperbolic Geometry
Saul Stahl, Mathematics, University of Kansas
[CLICK on poster image to download poster. Pass it on!]
[Campus Map for Talks (PDF Format)]
Hyperbolic geometry is described in terms of the upper
half-plane model. The notions of centroid and mass are then motivated
and defined in this geometry. The centroids and masses of a variety of
objects are computed. The resulting formulas contain many surprises.
BACK to Top of Page
Friday Sept. 21
Video/Film Series--Held this week in Haag Hall 307--
1. FLATLAND, The Movie!!
See a trailer at http://www.flatlandthemovie.com/
2. Infinite Acres (cartoon!)
[CLICK on poster image to download poster. Pass it on!]
[Campus Map for Talks (PDF Format)]
1. FLATLAND, The Movie
An animated 2007 film inspired by Edwin A. Abbott’s classic 1884 novel “Flatland”. Set in a world of only 2 dimensions inhabited by sentient geometric shapes, the story follows Arthur Square and his ever-curious granddaughter Hex. When a mysterious visitor arrives from spaceland, Arthur and Hex must come to terms with the truth of the third dimension, risking dire consequences from the evil Circles that have ruled Flatland for a thousand years. The cast includes the voices of: Martin Sheen (Arthur Square), Kristin Bell (Hex), Tony Hale, Joe Estevez, and Michael York
2. Infinite Acres (cartoon!)
This short humorous cartoon presents the paradox of a region with finite volume and infinite surface area. [A Mathematical Association of America Calculus Film; 1967]
BACK to Top of Page
Friday Sept. 28
Expository Talks Series--Held this week in Haag Hall 307--
A Glimpse at the History of
the Isoperimetric Problem
Zdenka Guadarrama, Mathematics, Rockhurst University
[CLICK on poster image to download poster. Pass it on!]
[Campus Map for Talks (PDF Format)]
Among all figures with a fixed perimeter P, which one has the largest area A? Already the ancient Greeks knew that the answer to this question is the circle with circumference P. We will explore early geometric arguments and some later analytic proofs.
BACK to Top of Page
Friday Oct. 5
No Talk;
Go to the Kansas City Regional Mathematics Technology EXPO
at Rockhurst University all day today, and tomorrow!
[Preregistration is FREE to all UMKC faculty and adjunct faculty (and just $5.00 for UMKC conference walk-ins); registration is only $15.00 for any student.]
BACK to Top of Page
Friday Oct. 19
Expository Talks Series
Incidences Between Points and Lines in the Plane
Derrick Hart, Mathematics, University of Missouri - Columbia
[CLICK on poster image to download poster. Pass it on!]
[Campus Map for Talks (PDF Format)]
A point P and a line L in the plane are said to be incident if P lies on
L. The Szemeredi-Trotter Incidence theorem gives a sharp upper bound on
the number of incidences between a collection of points and lines. We
shall prove this incidence theorem and discuss one of its consequences in
geometric combinatorics.
BACK to Top of Page
Friday Oct. 26
No Talk;
Visit the NCTM Regional Conference and Exposition in Kansas City, Oct. 25-27.
BACK to Top of Page
Friday Nov. 2
Expository Talks Series --Held this week in Haag Hall 307--
MERLIN: The Magic of Matrices
Nicholas Baeth, Mathematics, University of Central Missouri
[CLICK on poster image to download poster. Pass it on!]
[Campus Map for Talks (PDF Format)]
MERLIN, a toy manufactured by Hasbro, was quite popular throughout the 1980s and recently had a brief cameo on NBCs "My Name is Earl". When turned on, MERLIN announces with "his" crude mechanical voice, "I am MERLIN. Select game." Six of the numbered buttons then light up, each tempting you to choose that particular game. In a February 1987 article in The American Mathematical Monthly, Don Pelletier presented one of these six games and explained how to win using the tools covered in a standard first course in linear algebra. In this talk we will discuss MERLIN's 5th game "Magic Square". In particular we will use linear algebra to win in an optimal way. Perhaps more importantly, we will be able to determine if it is always possible to win at this game. As time allows, we will discuss several generalizations of this game.
BACK to Top of Page
Friday Nov. 9 --Held this week in Haag Hall 313--
Expository Talks Series
Knots, Virtually Speaking
Neil Nicholson, Mathematics, William Jewell College
[CLICK on poster image to download poster. Pass it on!]
[Campus Map for Talks (PDF Format)]
Gauss codes are ways of encoding knots. Given a knot diagram, they are simple to calculate, and provide a nice way to “get computational” with knots (i.e., to program knots into a computer). Every diagram induces a Gauss code; however, every Gauss code does not induce a classical knot. Louis Kauffman solved this problem in 1999 by introducing virtual knots. We will define virtual knots and their corresponding Jones polynomials. We will then prove the extremely nice and very useful result that every nontrivial classical knot induces a nontrivial virtual knot with trivial Jones polynomial. A brief discussion of how this theorem is on the cutting edge of attempts to find a counterexample to whether the Jones polynomial detects classical unknottedness will follow.
BACK to Top of Page
Friday Nov. 16
Expository Talks Series
Two (yes two!) Short Talks by Students from Mathematics
[Please come and support our students.]
[Note: We have three (3) more students speaking on Nov. 30!]
[CLICK on poster image to download poster. Pass it on!]
[Campus Map for Talks (PDF Format)]
(1)
Benko's New 2007 Proof that:
A given axb rectangle R can be decomposed into finitely-many rectangles which can be translated to compose another given parallel cxd rectangle R'
if and only if
area(R) = area(R') and a/c is rational.
Whitney Berard, Mathematics Student, UMKC
[Math 402, Advanced Analysis I]
(2)
Saari's 1981 Proof that:
In any election with N > 2 candidates, given j < N voting vectors w1, ..., wj
(procedures which assign points to each candidate according to the voter's ranking),
there exist voter profiles (choices of how the set of voters rank the candidates) so that when the voters vote for j of the candidates using voting vector wj,
then the jth candidate wins.
[An election outcome reflects the choice of a weighted voting procedure rather than the views of the voters!]
Brian Johnson, Mathematics Student, UMKC,
[Math 402, Advanced Analysis I]
BACK to Top of Page
Friday Nov. 30 --Held this week from 4:00-5:15 pm--
Expository Talks Series
Three More (yes 3 more!) Short Talks by Students from Mathematics
[Please come and support our students.]
[CLICK on poster image to download poster. Pass it on!]
[Campus Map for Talks (PDF Format)]
(1)
Koksma's 1949 Proof that:
er is irrational for all nonzero rational exponents r.
[Plus! Sondrow's new 2006 geometric proof that e is irrational.]
Yawo Ekpoh, Mathematics Student, UMKC
[Math 402, Advanced Analysis I]
(2)
Courant's 1941 Pancake Theorem Proof:
Two bounded, open, connected plane sets can be cut
by a single line that divides each set in half by area".
Jamie Spenard, Mathematics Student, UMKC,
[Math 402, Advanced Analysis I]
(3)
A Proof of Lebesgue's 1903 Criterion:
A function f: [a, b] to R is Riemann-integrable
if and only if
f is bounded and
the set of points of [a, b] at which f is not continuous has measure zero.
Tom Scott, Mathematics Student, UMKC,
[Math 402, Advanced Analysis I]
BACK to Top of Page
GO TO UMKC Department of Mathematics & Statistics