Upcoming Events
Student Research Symposium
Saturday, October 23, starting at 8am, in Richter and Overton Halls
Southern California Conference for Undergraduate Research
Saturday, November 20, starting at 7:30 am, at Pepperdine University
Past Events
Senior Capstone Presentations
Wednesday, May 13 from 11:00 - 3:30
Come support the senior math majors!!
They will be presenting their capstones which they have been researching for the pst semester.
Festival of Scholars
Monday, April 27 to Friday, May 1
During the Natural Science Division Oral Presentation on Thursday, April 30 at 11:30-1:30 in Lundring Events Center Alex Sherbetjian and Katie White are presenting.
Into the Woods open Thursday, April 30 at Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza where you can see Lydia Cleveland on stage.
Come see this year's Math Capstone projects on Friday, May 1 from 11:30-1:30 for the Natural Science Showcase-Student Poster Presentations.
Southern-California Section of the Mathematical Association of America--Spring Meeting at CLU
March 21, 2009
Program and Registration at:
http://www.csulb.edu/~fnewberg/SCNMAA/Meeting2009Spring.html
There are two ways to attend the MAA meeting. One is to go as a participant. The registration can be done on-line (link above) before 5pm on Tues 3/17 and is $12 for the conference only, or $20 if you have lunch there too. Three talks and a poster session with tons of ideas that students have investigated--it's a great deal! Not a great enough deal? Then consider the other method: work the conference as a member of the math club. Katie White (krwhite@clunet.edu) has been collecting the names of those planning to assist. I need to send the list of student names in on Mon 3/16 so that you can get FREE registration and lunch, so make sure she knows if you are going to work the conference (If you are working the conference, you don't need to register online). Rumor has it there's a trip to BJ's afterwards for the Math Club.
Euler's Formula for Polyhedra: Vertices, Faces, and Edges (Oh My!) (Department Seminar)
Presenter: Dr. Nathan Carlson, University of Arizona
Friday, March 20 at 4:00pm, Room D-8
Leonhard Euler was far and away the most prolific writer in the history of mathematics, publishing some 886 books and papers by some counts. Indeed, so many fundamental mathematical results are due to Euler that when someone refers to "Euler's Formula", one must ask, "Which one?" In this talk we'll prove and discuss Euler's famous formula that relates the numbers of vertices, faces, and edges of any convex polyhedron. The Formula and its proof are surprisingly straightforward and should be accessible to most every math student. Yet, as with most simple formulas in mathematics, there is a rich and deep underlying theory. We'll touch upon some of this theory, notably the theory of the Euler Characteristic and its topological properties. There is more to talk about than could ever be talked about in this colloquium, so the interested student is encouraged to do further exploration on his or her own.
Bending and Stretching Spaces (Department Seminar)
Presenter: Ruth Vanderpool, University of Oregon
Tuesday, March 17 at 4:00pm, Room D-8
Topologists formalize things like "bending" the shape X into Y and "stretching" the letter a into d with homotopy equivalence. Similar ideas translate to maps between spaces, and we can bend a function whose graph is a parabola into a constant function. For a fixed space X, the collection of continuous maps (up to homotopy equivalence) from a circle into X provide an algebraic structure called the first homotopy group of X. We will investigate the first homotopy group of a circle and use it to show that a circle cannot be bent or stretched into a point. If time permits, I'll introduce higher homotopy groups and draw a connection to stable homotopy theory.
Pacific Coast Undergraduate Math Conference
Pie Day! (March 14, 2009) at University of California, Riverside
8:30am - 4:00pm
For more information and to register go to www.pcumc-math.org
Register before March 7, 2009 for a free lunch
A topologist's view of subspace arrangements (Department Seminar)
Presenter: Dr. Matthew S. Miller, Bucknell University
Wednesday, March 4 at 4:00pm, Room Nygreen 3
When two people look at a piece of art they often focus on different properties. This is also the case when two mathematicians look at a subspace arrangement. We will use examples to discuss methods to classify subspace arrangements, with a focus on my favorite: a topological classification. A lattice that tells us how the subspaces intersect begins to illuminate the structure of an arrangement. After discussing some properties of the intersection lattice we will conclude with a recent theorem that brings together the intersection lattice and the topology of the arrangement.
How can you tell two knots apart and why would you want to? (Department Seminar)
Presenter: Dr. Imre Tuba, San Diego State University
Friday, February 27 at 4:00pm, Room D-8
Knots have been studied systematically by mathematicians for a little over a hundred years. While knots are fundamentally topological objects (if you don't know what that means, think geometry instead), their study often leads to questions in algebra and linear algebra. While many of these questions remain unanswered, the mathematics that was created to answer them has found applications in various areas ranging from cryptography to quantum mechanics. I will introduce some of this mathematics in my talk. If time permits, I will also describe how the mathematics may hold the key to building a new kind of computer that can efficiently solve problems that current computer technology has little hope of solving.
Modeling Painted Turtle Dynamics (Department Seminar)
Presenter: Amy Parrott
Tuesday, February 24 at 2:00pm, Room Nygreen 3
Painted turtles exhibit what is known as temperature dependent sex determination which means that temperature, not chromosomes, determines the sex of the turtle. This brings up the question, "What effects will global climate change have upon the species?" In this talk, I will describe the compartmental model I am using to help answer this question. I will examine closely the population projection matrix part of the model, and we will discuss what conclusions can be drawn based upon the different choices of starting values.
Math Department Seminar
Presenter: Dr. Jorge Garcia
Friday, December 5 at 10:00am in D-8
The risk process is the one that governs the behavior of the profit of a company assuming they start with an initial capital u and obtain a profit of c dollars per day and a sequence of claims of size Z that occur at a poisson rate. Think of a company that makes money out of life insurances, and each time somebody dies (a claim) they need to reimburse. We are mainly interested on what happens in the long run.
The Game of Hex (Department Seminar)
Presenter: Dr. Jennifer Brown
Friday, November 14 at 4:00pm in HUM 116
The game of Hex was invented independently in the 1940's by the mathematicians Piet Hein and John Nash. Hex is played on a board of hexagonal tiles. For a description and brief history, visit Wikipedia's entry on Hex, the game; or, play a game online at http://web.ukonline.co.uk/arthur.vause/Hex.html.
Two players, Black and White, alternate placing stones on the board. The goal of Black is to connect the top and bottom rows of hexagonal tiles by a path consisting of black stones; White's goal is to make a White path from the left to the right side. Whoever can make his path rst, wins.
Despite having one of the simplest sets of rules of any game, Hex is quite difficult to play well. We present the rules of Hex, its history, and several problems in mathematics (some of them unsolved) inspired by this game.
Math Minor Advising
Tuesday, October 28 in F-10 (the back room of the Math Dept)
Stop by anytime between 2:00-4:00pm
WHO: Math minors! People who are considering minoring in math!
WHY: To finish the minor, you need to complete a certain number of certain types of courses.
Which courses do you still need to take? In which semesters will the math department offer those
courses? You’ve got questions, we’ve got answers. Also, there are rumors of cookies and other
snacky goodness.
MAA Meeting
Saturday, October 11 at Scripps College
Register online by October 7th and Sign Up in the Math Lab
The speakers and their topics include:
Stephen Abbott - Mathematics as Art in Contemporary Drama
Bruce Yoshiwara - The Weapon of Choice
George Andrews - The Lost Notebook of Ramanujan
Tony DeRose - Math in the Movies
Student Research Symposium
Saturday, October 11 in Richter Hall
Math department speakers include:
Jeff Akkerman
Kristina Klug
Alex Sherbetjian
Katie White
and they will all be speaking during Session I, beginning at 8:30AM.
Math Majors and Minors Meeting
Wednesday, October 1, 2008 at 4:00pm in F-4
Topics include introduction of faculty, updates on course offerings (and their scheduling),
descriptions of some co-curricular opportunities, announcements about the Single Subject
program (and entrance interviews), upcoming seminars, and Math Club events.
CLU Math Seminar: Poincare Conjecture
Presenters: Jeff Akkerman and Kristina Klug
Friday, September 26 at 4:00pm in D-8
CSUCI Seminars
Recent Activities
Math Club Social at Dr King's house
Student Research Symposium Fall 2008
Research Experiences for Undergraduates
Summer REU (research experiences for undergraduates) programs are NSF supported. Information on all of these can be found at:
http://www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/reu/reu_search.cfm
Most of these sites conduct research in one or two areas of mathematics and have five to ten participants each summer, but there is considerable variation in the structure of the programs. All the programs provide the participants with a stipend and possibly other support. Most programs are quite selective, but the number of applications that the programs receive varies greatly so some programs are far more selective than others. Application deadlines vary but the earliest ones are around February 15 and the latest ones are in April, with most of them in late February or early March.
