golden maa section meetingsections.maa.org/golden/documents/goldenmaasection-davis.pdf · here is a...

11/29/15 12:01 PMGolden MAA Section Meeting

of 7file:///Users/deloera/Desktop/MAAevent/MeetingMAA.html

Register

Online Registration coming soon! Click here to register online and pay with a credit card

Click here to register by mail and pay by check (DEADLINE: received by FEB 24).

Golden Section

Time to show yourwork! Your Art

Do you have a studentwho is ready to give amathematical POSTER?

Invite them to give apresentation in theContributed PosterSession!

Submission deadline isFEB 21 by 12noon.

Are you interested in Artand Math? Do you have amathematically-inspiredart piece?

We invite you to presentit in the forthcoming artexhibit!

Submission deadline isFEB 21 by 12noon

Winter 2016 Golden Section Meeting

University of California, DavisDavis, CASaturday, February 27, 2016

(Directions and Map)

Program

Featuring the following exciting invited addresses by

Persi Diaconis, Stanford UniversityCarries, Group Theory, and Additive Combinatorics

Erica Flapan, Pomona CollegeIntrinsic Properties of Graphs in Space

Janko Gravner, University of California, DavisRandomness and Order in Random Order

Bernd Sturmfels, University of California, BerkeleyEigenvectors of Tensors

Rekha Thomas, University of WashingtonGraph Densities, Extremal Combinatorics and Optimization

The meeting will also feature

1) A contributed poster session (follow the link to the Call for Posters).

AND

2) a new exciting Math-Art exhibit! instructions for math-artists (follow the link for instructions)Organized and curated by Shirley Yap, CSU East Bay

Schedule and Location (ALL talks are in Giedt Hall 1001, close to parking)

8:00-11:00 RegistrationGiedt Hall8:00 -10:30 RefreshmentsGiedt hall entrance8:30-4:00 MAA Book SaleGiedt Hall entrance8:45-9:00 Welcome CeremonyGiedt Hall 10019:00-9:50 Invited talk by Persi DiaconisTBAGiedt Hall 10019:50 -10:05pm Golden Section Business MeetingGiedt hall entrance

http://www.eventbrite.com/e/maa-golden-section-annual-meeting-tickets-19764227336%5Beventbrite.com%5D

http://goo.gl/forms/WcTxVy1ZHm

http://sections.maa.org/golden/



Giedt hall entrance10:10-11:05am Invited talk by Rekha ThomasTBAGiedt Hall 100111:10-12:00am Invited talk by Janko GravnerTBAGiedt Hall 100112:00-1:00pm Lunch (at TERCERO dining, short walk from Giedt)Lunch is buffet style1:00-2:30pm POSTER Session and MATH-ART exhibition (refreshments on lobby)In Giedt Hall 1002, 1003 adjacent rooms2:40-3:30pm Invited Address by Erica Flapan (P\'olya Lecturer)TBAGiedt Hall 10013:40 -3:55pm Teaching Award CeremonyGiedt hall entrance4:00-4:50 pmInvited Address by Bernd SturmfelsTBAGiedt Hall 1001End of event, Self-organized dinner with other participantsSee information about dining options below

Directions and Maps

Driving directions from interstate 80:

Take HWY 113 North.

Take the first exit, Hutchison drive, stay on your right to merge onto Hutchison.

Continue straight for three lights (you are entering the main campus)

After you cross La Rue road, at the third light, turn left to enter the parking structure

Here is a PDF file of the campus map with (A) parking, (B) conference location, (C) lunchvenue, all marked in red.

Parking: Parking is free in the Pavilion Parking structure (see campus map). No permit isrequired on the weekend.

Hotels

For participants there are several options (distance to campus, from closer to farthest away)

Best Western University Lodge (530) 756-7890Aggie Inn (530) 756-0352Best Western Plus Palm Court Hotel (530) 753-7100Econo Lodge (530) 756-1040University Park Inn and Suites (530) 756-0910La Quinta Inn & Suites Davis (530) 758-2600Holiday Inn Express & Suites Davis (530) 297-1500



Food & Dining

A light continental breakfast will be provided to all participants. We will also provide refreshments during the long break for posters/art exhibit.

If you must have a expresso in the morning, we recommend Mishka's Cafe (downtown 2nd st.and E), but there are other coffee shops in downtown, e.g., Peet's coffee (E st), Starbucks (F st),Delta Venus (B st). The excellent Davis farmer market (B and 3rd) has sweet breads and coffeestoo

The lunch organized by the conference is a buffet lunch at the residence hall dining hall (5 minswalk from the conference site). Lunch needs to be purchased in advanced (via registration!). Thelunch is all-you-can-eat style buffet, with several food stations that include typical fair such assandwiches, soups & salads, pizzas, burgers, as well as special gluten-free, vegetarian, or veganchoices. Free unlimited soft drink, coffee, tea, and dessert and fruit are included.

NOTE: It takes 10-15 mins to walk to other lunch options toward downtown.

We very much hope people will stay until the end of the event and have a chance to socializewith old and new friends and colleagues. Here below are some options for dinner that take largegroups (last two are great choices but are outside downtown Davis). We suggest to call aheadand make a reservation if your group is large. The entire list of restaurants in Davis can be foundat a href="http://davisdowntown.com/dining/" target="_blank">all Davis dining options.

Sophia’s Thai Kitchen (530) 758-4333Burgers and Brew (530) 750-3600Woodstock's Pizza Davis (530) 757-2525Steve's Pizza (530) 758-2800Sudwerk Brewery and Restaurant (530) 758-8700Symposium Restaurant & Pizza (530) 756-3850

Speaker's bios and abstracts of invited talks

Persi Diaconis

Stanford University

Persi Diaconis is the Mary V. Sunseri Professor of Statistics andMathematics at Stanford University. He is particularly known fortackling mathematical problems involving randomness andrandomization, such as coin flipping and shuffling playing cards. Amember of the National Academy of Science and a Fellow of theAmerican Mathematical Society, he has been the recipient ofnumerous awards, including the Rollo Davidson prize, GibbsLecturer, the Van Wijngaarden Award, the Levi L. Conant Prize. Hehas received honorary degrees from the University of Chicago andthe University of St Andrews.

Carries, Group Theory, and Additive Combinatorics

When we add numbers in the usual way, "carries" occur (for two digits chosen at random, thechance of a carry is 45%). We can do better, by a factor of two, by using signed digits but nochoice of digits does any better. This last result is a theorem in additive combinatorics. The



choice of digits does any better. This last result is a theorem in additive combinatorics. Thesame kind of questions can be asked for any group (as I will explain, carries are co-cycles). WithShao and Soundararajan, we proved the following: let H be a normal subgroup of a finite groupG. Let X be co-set representatives for H in G. Let C(X)=\#\{x,y in X with xy outside X}/|X|^2(so C(X) is, at most, 1). We show that if C(X) is greater than 7/9, the extension splits (there is achoice of coset representatives with no carries).

Rekha Thomas

University of Washington,Seattle

Rekha Thomas received a Ph.D. in Operations Research fromCornell University in 1994 under the supervision of BerndSturmfels. She then held post-doctoral positions atthe CowlesFoundation for Economics at Yale University (with Herb Scarf), andthe Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum for Informationstechnik in Berlin. Afterspending a few years in the math department at Texas A&MUniversity, she moved to Seattle, where she is now a full professorin the math department at the University of Washington. She is afellow of the American Math Society and held the Robert R. andElaine F. Phelps Professorship at the University of Washington from2008-2012. Her main research interests are in optimization,computational algebra and its applications.

Graph Densities, Extremal Combinatorics and Optimization

One of the corner stones of extremal combinatorics is the 1907 result of Mantel that a trianglefree graph on n vertices cannot have more than half the maximum possible number of edges as ngoes to infinity. The more detailed version of this question asks what the edge density will limitto given a specific triangle density. The full answer to this question eluded mathematicians foralmost 100 years until it was settled by Razborov around 2007 using a framework called flagalgebras. This tool has led to several other powerful results in extremal combinatorics. In thistalk I will present a new take on this approach and its offshoots using symmetry exploitingmethods in optimization. Along the way one encounters algebra, combinatorics, probability,representation theory, and optimization, making for a wild ride across several mathematicallandscapes. Joint work with Annie Raymond and Mohit Singh.

Janko Gravner

University of California,Davis

Janko Gravner finished his BS in Applied Mathematics atUniversity of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and then his Ph. D. inMathematics at University of Wisconsin. After a posdoc at CornellUniversity, he came to UC Davis, where he has been since 1992.Janko is an expert probabilist who enjoys using computing in hiswork. E.g., his work on the modeling of snowflakes formation hasattracted the attention of the media. He is also recognized as greatteacher and expositor.

Randomness and Order in Random Order

The talk will be an elaboration on the principle that a mixture of randomness and order makeslife interesting. A common lie heard from mathematicians is a variation of: "The talk will beunderstandable by general audience." I will take that statement as a challenge, presenting ideas



understandable by general audience." I will take that statement as a challenge, presenting ideassuch as self-organization and metastability with no formal statements at all, in fact with nomathematical symbols.

Bernd Sturmfels

University of California,Berkeley

Bernd Sturmfels received doctoral degrees in 1987 from theUniversity of Washington and the Technical University Darmstadt,Germany. After postdoctoral years in Minneapolis and Linz,Austria, he taught at Cornell University, before joining UC Berkeleyin 1995, where he is Professor of Mathematics, Statistics andComputer Science. His honors include the Ford Prize, theAllendorfer Award, and the Hedrick Lectures, all from the MAA. Aleading experimentalist among mathematicians, Sturmfels hasauthored ten books and 235 research articles, in the areas ofcombinatorics, algebraic geometry, and their applications. He hasmentored 40 doctoral students and numerous postdocs. His currentresearch connects algebra to statistics, optimization, and biology.

Eigenvectors of Tensors

Eigenvectors of square matrices are central to linear algebra. Eigenvectors of tensors are anatural generalization. The spectral theory of tensors was pioneered by Lim and Qi a decadeago, and it has found numerous applications. We discuss the use of orthogonal tensordecompositions in data analysis, and we present work with Abo and Seigal aimed atcharacterizing which configurations of vectors arise as the eigenvectors of some tensor. Thislecture also serves an invitation to applied algebraic geometry.

Erica Flapan

Pomona College

Erica Flapan joined the faculty at Pomona College in 1986. Since2006, she has been the Lingurn H. Burkhead Professor ofMathematics at Pomona College. In addition to teaching at PomonaCollege, Flapan has been teaching regularly at the SummerMathematics Program for freshmen and sophomore Women atCarleton College. In 2011, Flapan won the MathematicalAssociation of America’s Haimo award for distinguished college oruniversity teaching of mathematics. Then in 2012, she was selectedas an inaugural fellow of the American Mathematical Society. Sheis currently a Polya Lecturer for the MAA. Erica Flapan haspublished extensively in topology and its applications to chemistryand molecular biology.

Intrinsic Properties of Graphs in Space

Knot theory is the study of embeddings of simple closed curves in three-dimensional space. Anatural extension of knot theory is the study of embeddings of graphs. However, in contrast withknots, the structure of a graph can be complex, and this can affect all of its embeddings. If everyembedding of a graph has a particular property, then we say that property is intrinsic to thegraph. For example, a graph is said to be intrinsically knotted if every embedding of the graph inspace contains a knot. In this talk, I will discuss intrinsic knotting and other intrinsic properties



space contains a knot. In this talk, I will discuss intrinsic knotting and other intrinsic propertiesof graphs.

Contributed Poster Session

ALL students (undergraduate and graduate) are invited to submit short proposals for posters tobe included the Contributed POSTER Session of the Meeting.

This session accepts contributions in all areas of mathematics, and all complete proposals willbe considered.

There are many slots, but space is not unlimited, so please submit your poster early! It will helpus plan for easels and boards needed.

Submissions should contain a title, an abstract (not to exceed 150 words, suitable for inclusionin the conference program), the name(s) of author(s) of the work (with an indication of who thepresenter will be), and any special requests. Do include in each submission the institutionalaffiliations of all authors. Each poster will be provided an easel space and a board to display thework.Abstracts should be submitted in LaTeX format, with an accompanying PDF file. If you do notuse LaTeX, please submit a Text document together with a PDF file. Please email allsubmissions to WHO IS THIS? (who at where.edu).

The submission deadline is 12 noon .

Student presenters receive complimentary registration and Saturday luncheon, plus a free one-year membership to the MAA or (to those who are already MAA members) a free book. Welooking forward to your submissions!

Math-Art Exhibit

For the first time in the history of the Golden Section, we will be hosting a mathematical artexhibition. If you know anyone who produces art with strong mathematical theme or content,please encourage them to submit their piece for consideration in the exhibit.

Guidelines

For consistency, we will adhere with many of the guidelines set by the Joint MathematicalMeetings art exhibit. Flat works will be limited in size to 20” x 28” (including frame), and 3-Dworks will be limited to 18” x 18” x 18”. Exceptions will occasionally be made for existingartworks that exceed these dimensions. There is a limit of three artworks per artist. An exceptionis a group of closely-related small pieces that number no more than five pieces occupying a totalfootprint of no more than 15” x 15”, which can be submitted as a single piece. An artist canappear on more than one submission in the case of collaborative work, but the total number ofartworks for any given artist is limited to three regardless of whether some are collaborative ornot.

Submission

Please email at most two photos (< 10 MB each) of each piece you’d like to submit, along witha brief description (< 100 words) of the piece, to [email protected] Deadline for submission: January 20.

A committee will review all submissions for mathematical content and craftsmanship. Artists

mailto:[email protected]



A committee will review all submissions for mathematical content and craftsmanship. Artistswill get a response by February 5.

Event

The art exhibit will take place during an hour and a half between the morning and afternoonsessions. During these time, we encourage the artists to stand or sit by their pieces so as toencourage interaction between the viewers and the artist.

Artists are expected to register for and attend the conference. When you arrive at the conferencein the morning, you may store your piece in a locked room until the art exhibition begins andretrieve it at the end of the event.

Artists are responsible for their pieces. MAA Golden and UC Davis do not assumeresponsability and will only provide storage and display space.

golden maa section meetingsections.maa.org/golden/documents/goldenmaasection-davis.pdf · here is a...

Documents