| Date |
Speaker(s) |
Title(s) |
Abstract |
Sept. 12
|
Margaret
Robinson (MHC)
plus film
|
Film: "The Math Life", plus
organization for the term.
|
Margaret
Robinson will lead a short discussion about Club activities for the
term. Come with suggestions. We'll then see as much of the
film as time permits. Pizza and beverages at 12:15 in 416 Clapp;
movie in 407.
|
Sept. 19
|
Students with
summer 07 experiences to share.
|
Summer opportunities for math and stat students.
|
Come
learn about how to find good summer opportunities that use and
enhance your math and/or stat background.
Pizza
and beverages at 12:15 in 416 Clapp.
|
Sept.
26
|
Jillian McLeod plus other dept
faculty
|
Preparing
for graduate school
|
Majors
in math/stat have lots of opportunities for graduate study. Come
learn about ways to prepare yourself to make good choices and to
succeed.
Pizza
and beverages at 12:15 in 416 Clapp..
|
Sept
29
UMass
10-4:30
|
Dr. Sukyoung Ryu, Sun
Microsystems Laboratories,
|
"CS
Saturday": grad school and careers in computer science
|
For
more information see http://www.cs.umass.edu/cs-saturday/
|
Oct..
3
|
Prof. Alan Robinson, Isenberg
School, UMass
|
Creativity in the Workplace
|
In the first of two talks,
Professor Robinson will describe how the most creative teams work
together to get the most innovative outcomes. We will begin by watching
"Deep Dive" -- the most famous video on creativity and innovation ever
filmed (20 minutes long) -- and then, in the ensuing discussion, draw
out all the deliberate things the team did to make itself more
creative.
Pizza
and beverages at 12:15 in 416 Clapp.
|
Oct. 10
|
Fatema Burhani '09
and Morgan Shaffer '09
|
Summer
research reports
|
Fatema
and Morgan will describe their summer research.
Pizza
and beverages at 12:15 in 416 Clapp. |
Oct. 17
|
Bob Weaver, MHC
|
Transformations in Computer Graphics
.
|
We’ll look at how objects are transformed in
graphics – for instance, we’ll see how to do rotations, scalings,
translations, and shearings -- all with simple matrix
multiplication. We'll see why, in order to do these operations
with matrices, we need to go into the 4th dimension!! We'll also
see examples of these operations in action.
Pizza and beverages at 12:15 in
416 Clapp.
|
Oct
17
7pm
Amherst College
|
Ken
Ono
|
TBA
|
Undergraduate
Connecticut Valley Mathematics Colloquium, open to all Five College
students (and faculty). Pizza at 6pm and talk at 7pm. More
info coming.
|
Oct. 24
|
Mary Fleischli, MHC '93
|
When you were five years old, did you dream of
becoming an actuary?
|
I'll
tell you why I love it: I get to problem solve every day in a business
environment! In my job, I use math, econ and stats! I am
constantly learning new things in my job! I'll give you advice on how
to prepare now for this exciting journey, for internships and full time
employment and how to make good money (and give some back to Mt.
Holyoke too!)
Pizza and beverages at 12:15 in 416
Clapp.
|
Oct
27
9-3:15
|
Bentley
College
|
Math
at Work
|
Conference
website
This conference, which is sponsored by the Northeastern Section of the
Mathematical Association of America (MAA) and Bentley College, will
feature a keynote address by Professor Robert L. Devaney of Boston
University, as well as 26 workshops in various areas relating to
mathematics where employment opportunities exist. Undergraduate
students, college faculty, high-school students and faculty are
encouraged to attend. Representatives of graduate programs will be
available to meet with students.
|
Oct. 31
|
Dept. faculty
|
Information
on Spring 300-level courses at MHC and the 5 Colleges
|
Pizza
and beverages at 12:15 in 416 Clapp.
|
Nov
2
5:00 p.m.
407 Clapp
Refreshments 4:30 in 416 Clapp
|
Alin Popescu, Renesys Corporation
|
Digital
Image Forensics,
2007 Connecticut Valley
Mathematics Colloqium at MHC
|
Since its introduction in 1826, the
photograph has acquired
a unique status as a truthful and definitive recording of events. The
increasing ease with which photographs can be
manipulated has diminished their status as an impartial
record. With the availabilty of low-cost digital cameras and powerful
photo-editing software, even casual users can create digital forgeries
that are very difficult to
distinguish from real photographs.
In this talk I will present a set of statistical
techniques
and other mathematical tools for detecting tampering in digital images.
Empirical evidence shows that tampering of <>digital images,
while often visually imperceptible,
alters
some of their underlying statistical properties. These subtle changes
can be
exploited to design algorithms that
can detect traces of tampering.
I will discuss several techniques that quantify and detect
tampering: (1) detection of traces of re-sampling (e.g., scaling or
rotations)
in any portion of an image; (2) detection of tampering in color filter
array
interpolated images; (3) detection of double JPEG compression; and
(4)detection
of duplicated image regions.
This is joint work with Hany Farid. |
Nov.
7
|
Taylor Pressler '08
|
Singular
Value Decomposition and its Applications to Fourier Transform Infrared
Spectroscopy Studies of Amyloid Protein Dynamics
|
Singular
Value Decomposition (SVD) is a type of component analysis that can be
used to decompose a real m x n matrix (m >= n). SVD can
be very useful when analyzing large sets of spectroscopic data
collected as a function of time. Fourier Transform Infrared
Spectroscopy (FTIR) is used to study the conformational changes of
proteins. This technique is widely used in biophysical chemistry
reseearch on the misfolding of proteins associated with Alzheimer's
Disease. A time series of FTIR spectra is regarded as a matrix,
in which each row corresponds to a frequencency at a fixed time.
A useful way to analyze the data is to decompose the matrix into a sum
of terms by SVD. The individual terms in this decomposition
then hold a real physical significance. This allows a purely
mathematical operation to isolate physical effects as different
terms. For example, a protein change can be comprised of both
fast and slow processes, and in a typical application these are
separated by SVD. Other contributions to the spectra, such as
buffer and water vapor, which would have to be subtracted out through
data processing, are also isolated into individual terms. This
can help eliminate artifacts which arise from data processing and
preserve data integrity.
Pizza
and beverages at 12:15 in 416 Clapp.
|
Nov. 14
|
Rajalakshmi Balasubramanian, MHC 96
|
Biostatistics in Public Health and
Biomedical Research
|
Raji graduated from MHC in
1996 with a special major combining mathematics, statistics and
computer science. She received her PhD in Biostatistics at
Harvard University in 2001 and is now Associate Director,
Biostatistics, at BG Medicine, Inc, Waltham, MA. Pizza and
beverages at 12:15
in 416 Clapp.
|
Nov. 16
4:00 p.m.
305 Kendade
|
Hennie
Poulisse, Shell Oil
The Senechal
Lecture
|
Algebraic Oil
|
This talk presents the encounter
of Computational Commutative Algebra with noisy, measured data from an
industrial process, notably data related to processes in oil industry.
More specifically Computational Commutative Algebra is used to describe
the behavior of an oil production system using only measured data of
the production system as input information. Noisy data means
Uncertainty, and that in itself would seem to be a logical antagonist
of Commutative - Algebra. That is not necessarily a bad thing. Indeed,
William Byers advocates in his recent text How Mathematicians Think the
importance of ambiguity, contradiction, and paradox for creativity, and
hence progress in mathematics. But bad thing or not, the Noisy
DataCommutative Algebra combination is not an obvious choice.
|
Nov.
28
|
Harriet Pollatsek
MHC
|
The
Smallest Hamming Code: conquering frustration with algebra
|
Richard Hamming invented his
error-correcting code in 1946,
under frustrating circumstances, which I’ll describe.
Error-correcting codes are still being
invented and analyzed. They have
been
used to protect information sent back to earth from NASA’s satellites
as well
as that coded on CDs.
Error-correcting codes are also needed to
protect fragile information in a quantum computer.
In this talk I’ll explain how and why
Hamming’s smallest code “works.” The
underlying mathematics is just a little linear algebra, although I’ll
have
asides on group theory and finite geometry.
Pizza
and beverages at 12:15 in 416 Clapp.
|
Dec. 5
|
Liana
Medina-Rios '09
|
Conference Attending 101
|
Conference attending is a new
experience for most undergraduates. I will discuss reasons for
attending a conference, the experience of attending a conference from
the point of view of an undergraduate, along with tips and advice on
how to plan your trip and participation in a conference. I will
also discuss the Infinite Possibilities Conference I attended this
November. This talk will hopefully be helpful to students
thinking about attending a conference.
Pizza and beverages at 12:15 in 416
Clapp..
|
Dec. 12
|
Everyone
|
End of term party
|
Lunch and goodies at
12:15 in 416 Clapp.
|
