Spring 2018
Tuesday, February 13th
Robert Root, Lafayette College
"Exploring Social Justice"
Alexander Hamilton said “I think the first duty of society is justice.” In our society, the nature of a just society is fiercely debated. Can mathematics help us to understand what a just society is and how we might work toward greater justice in our own society? We will look at a variety of connections between mathematics and social justice, including mathematical results, some of them recent, bearing on this discourse.
Noon
Tome 115
Lunch provided
Tuesday, February 20th
Eva Goedhart, Lebanon Valley College
"Pat-A-Cake, Pat-A-Cake Baker's Man, Bake Me a Logarithm as Fast as You Can"
She will present a friendly version of using Baker’s method of linear forms in logarithms so they can help solve Diophantine equations, after a quick look at some history of the Greek mathematician Diophantus.
Noon
Tome 115
Lunch provided
Tuesday, February 27
Todd Neller, Gettysburg College
"The Birds of Feather Research Challenge"
In this talk, we present a new solitaire card game (i.e. card puzzle) called Birds of a Feather and discuss potential undergraduate research challenges concerning the puzzle. We’ll describe similar student research experiences of the past and engage those attending in solving such puzzles and seeking to describe strategies and interesting features of individual puzzles. After sharing a few basic discoveries, we will describe opportunities for Dickinson students to join in a research competition that may result in published work at a major conference.
Noon
Tome 118
Lunch provided
Tuesday, March 20th
Elizabeth Drellich, Swarthmore College
"Cars, Cartoons, and Cohomology"
How do you program a 3D printer to get the sleek curves on your model of your favorite car? How do animators make sure that complicated surfaces appear smooth on screen? And what do these questions have to do with algebra?
The surface of your model car or your favorite Pixar character's face is made up of a collection of polynomials that fit together smoothly called a spline. These splines are models, but they are also algebraic objects that can be added and multiplied. Some splines even contain deep information about the structure of groups and algebraic varieties, but you don't need to know what those are for this talk.
This talk will introduce you to splines and show you some of their many wonderful uses.
Noon
Tome 115
Pizza provided
Tuesday, April 17th
Mathematics & Computer Science Majors Dinner
Professor Dick Forrester will present "The Most Famous Experiment in Statistical Thinking: The Lady Tasting Tea"
Upsilon Pi Epsilon and Pi Mu Epsilon Inductions
Departmental Prizes and Awards
6:00pm
HUB Social Hall - West
Thursday, April 26th
Computer Science Honors Defense
Jake Beley '18 - "Secure and Lightweight Communication in Heterogeneous IoT Environments"
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a fast growing and rapidly innovating field. Everyday objects from smart home appliances (e.g. toasters and refrigerators), to health monitoring products (e.g. pacemakers and blood pressure monitors), to minuscule sensors and actuators are being redesigned to be able to transfer data over a network. The connection of millions of new objects to the Internet will cause a dramatic increase in the amount of shared data which will simultaneously introduce a plethora of security risks. Understanding how to secure the data being sent over IoT links is necessary for the IoT paradigm to succeed. This talk will go over current trends and standards in the IoT field. We will present the results from our year-long research project that provides a quantitative analysis of the performance trade-offs that originate from creating a secure Internet connection on IoT devices in a real IoT testbed.
Noon
Stafford Lecture Room
Lunch provided
Wednesday, May 9th
Mathematics & Computer Science End of Year Picnic
Rector Courtyard (Rain Location - Rector Atrium)
Noon
Burgers, hot dogs and veggie burgers provided by Dining Services