| Date |
Speaker(s) |
Title(s) |
Abstract |
| Sept. 13 |
Jessica Sidman, MHC
|
Seeking Problem Solving Enthusiasts!
|
Fun problems
and shameless advertising for the weekly problem-solving
seminar. Contact Jessica Sidman if you'd like to join.
The Department of Mathematics and Statistics is seeking students
interested in participating in weekly problem-solving strategy sessions.
Students who wish to take "the Putnam" may find these problem-solving
sessions especially helpful, but these sessions are for all students
who want to attend. Pizza and beverages served at noon in 416
Clapp. Talk 12:20-1:00 pm.
|
Sept. 20
|
Student panel
|
"What I Did on
My Summer Vacation" |
Everything
you ever wanted to know about
summer experiences (research and internships) by a panel of
experts. MHC math/stat majors who participated in summer research
programs and internships in summer 2005 will describe their
experiences, including how they found their opportunities and what
preparation they required. Find out how you can
find a good summer opportunity to use and expand your mathematics
and/or statistics background. |
Sept.
20 4pm Smith
|
Xiao-Li Meng, Statistics, Harvard
|
"The
full Monte Carlo: a live performance"
4:00pm, McConnell 103 (Clark Science Center),
refreshments at 3:45pm.
|
Markov
chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods, originating in comput- tational
physics about half a century ago, have seen an enormous range of
applications in quantitative scientific investi-gations. This is mainly
due to their ability to simulate from very complex distributions such
as the ones needed in realistic statistical models. This talk provides
an introductory tutorial of the two most frequently used MCMC
algorithms: the Gibbs sampler and the Metropolis-Hastings
algorithm. Using simple yet non-trivial examples, we demonstrate, via
live performance, the good, bad, and ugly implementations. Along the
way, we also reveal the secret behind the greatest statistical magic.
|
Sept. 27
|
George Cobb,
MHC
|
"Global
warming, data compression, and the
hockey stick controversy"
|
TBA
Pizza and beverages served at noon in
416 Clapp. Talk 12:20-1:00 pm.
|
Sept
27
4:30 pm
Amh. C.
|
Harold Boas, Texas A&M
|
"Everything
you know (about converging power series) is wrong"
|
Connecticut
Valley Mathematics Colloquium at Amherst College.
Talk at 4:30 in206 Seeley Mudd; refreshments at 4:00 in 208.
|
| Oct. 4 |
Department faculty
|
So, you want to go to grad school?
|
Math and stat majors have many options for
graduate study: mathematics (pure and applied), statistics, allied
fields that use mathematics and statistics, professional master’s
degrees of various kinds. How should you prepare yourself with
coursework? With outside the classroom experiences? What is
required for an application? Department faculty, led by Giuliana
Davidoff, will discuss the answers to these questions.
Pizza and beverages will be served.
|
Oct
10
7pm, CDC
|
info session
|
Math
for America and the Newton Fellowship
|
Come
learn more about the Newton Fellowship and how you can become a part of
a rewarding, supportive and unique teaching program in New York
City. More information is at their website Math for America
|
Oct. 11
|
Weiwen Miao,
Macalester and MHC
|
The Use of Statistics in the Legal System
|
A
lot of standard statistical procedures require that the underlying
distribution follows a bell-shaped normal curve. If the data do not
meet this assumption, the results often are not valid, and the outcome
of the trial might be totally different. This problem occurred in a
security law case in which I was one of the statistical consultants of
the law firm. For the same data set, different methods (one assumes
normality, and the other doesn’t.) gave completely different results.
The talk concentrates on the commonly used graphic method to check
normality -- the quantile-quantile plot. (QQ plot) and its robust
modification -- RQQ plot. Applying the QQ plot and RQQ plot to data
sets arising from two actual law cases: the security law case that
motivated the research and a drug smuggling case, I’ll show that the
RQQ plot provides a better indication of non-normality. No
experience with statistics is required -- all are welcome.
|
Oct. 18
|
Pamela Matheson
PhD,
Research Specialist GCC
|
Will
my baby be infected with HIV?
Risk profiles for HIV+ pregnant women: contributing factors in
mother-to-child transmission
|
Using
data from the largest prospectively followed cohort of HIV+ pregnant
women, Dr. Matheson will discuss the interrelationships among maternal
and delivery factors and how maternal risk profiles were created.
In order to identify subgroups of women at risk for transmitting HIV to
their fetus, recursive partitioning (RP) analysis, a simpler and
alternative to multiple logistic regression was conducted.
Distinct subpopulations were identified and specific characteristics
were associated with differential risk for transmission; ranging from
as low as 2% to as high as 70%. The resulting classification
trees assist in hypothesizing the underlying mechanisms and
interactions of risk factors for mother-to-child transmission of
HIV-1. Knowledge of combinations of factors associated with high
risk play an important role in creating appropriately targeted
interventions.
|
Oct. 25
|
Mufaro
Kanyangarara '07
MHC
|
How
to Design a Survey for
Epidemiological Research
|
Increasing
services for babies exposed to HIV/AIDS can be challenging in
developing countries due to the stigma associated with such HIV/AIDS
services. Several countries have sought to combine basic medical care
for HIV-exposed infants with regular immunization schedules to improve
survival of HIV-exposed infants. Implementation of such a program
requires enhancing the immunization teams with training on HIV
follow-up, adding more counselors, and adding drugs for opportunistic
infections.
Before such an integrated program can be implemented on a national
level, several questions need to be addressed:
-Does integration of HIV and immunization services increase the rate at
which HIV-exposed infants receive appropriate follow-up care?
-Does integration of HIV and immunization services change vaccine
coveragerates?
-Does integration of HIV and immunization services result in women
avoiding immunization service points out of fear of HIV stigma or
unwanted HIV-related discussions?
These questions can be answered by carrying out vaccine coverage
surveys in an “implementation” district and a “control” district.
Results can be used to guide proposal planning for expansion to a
national level, as well as to lobby for additional funds needed to
support expansion.
In my talk, I will discuss how such a survey can be designed.
|
Oct
26
7:30 pm
UMass
|
Robert Moses, Algebra Project
|
Feinberg
Lecture in the series
"Politics and Protest: the 1960s and Now"
|
Robert
Moses is a prominent civil rights activist and founder of the Algebra
Project, which "assists students in inner city and rural areas to
achieve mathematics literacy ... skills necessary for entry
into the economic mainstream." (http://www.algebra.org).
He's speaking at 7:30 p.m. at Mahar Auditorium at UMass.
|
Nov. 1
|
Deptartment
faculty
|
Information session on 300-level
courses, spring 2007
|
Come learn about 300-level courses
in mathematics and statistics for spring 2007, including both MHC
courses and offerings in the Valley.
|
Nov 8
|
John
Wettlaufer, Yale University
|
Phase
Transitions, Ocean Freezing and Climate Catastrophes: Melting below Zero
|
The
surface of ice exhibits the swath of phase transition phenomena common
to all materials and as such it acts as an ideal test bed of both
theory and experiment. It is readily available, transparent,
optically bifrefringent and probing it in the laboratory does not
require cryogenics or ultra high vacuum apparatus. Systematic
study reveals the range of critical phenomena, equilibrium and
nonequilibrium phase transitions and, most relevant to this talk,
premelting, traditionally studied in more simply bound
solids. While this makes ice as a material appealing from
the perspective of the physicist, its ubiquity and importance in the
natural environment makes ice compelling to a broad range of
disciplines in the earth and planetary sciences. I describe the
physics of the premelting of ice, its relationship with other materials
more familiar to the condensed matter community and then we develop a
number of the many tendrils of the basic phenomena as they play out on
land, in the oceans and throughout the atmosphere.
I am happy then to stay afterwards to answer any questions for students
of any level who may be interested in graduate school at Yale in
applied mathematics, physics and applied physics, astronomy and the
earth and planetary sciences.
|
Nov
11
10-5
Holy Cross
|
Ira
Gessel, Ruth Haas, John Little,
Alin Popescu, Seth Sullivant
|
Discrete
Math Day at College of the Holy Cross
|
One
of a series of day-long meetings on combinatorics and discrete math in
the northeast. Contact
Harriet Pollatsek or Jessica Sidman if you'd like to attend.
|
Nov
14
4pm
Smith
|
Daniel Zelterman, Biostatistics,
Yale
|
"Statistical
inference for familial disease clusters through matching"
|
In
many epidemiologic studies, the first indication of an environmental or
genetic contribution to the disease is the way in which the diseased
cases cluster within the same family units. The concept of clustering
is contrasted with incidence. New parametric generalizations of
binomial sampling models are described to provide measures of the
effect size of the disease clustering. We consider models and an
example that takes covariates into account. Ascertainment bias is
described and the appropriate sampling distribution is
demonstrated.
|
Nov
15
|
Kara
McMahon '7 & Priscilla
Yohuno 09
|
A
Model of Nulear Transport (KMcM) and Unveiling the Mysteries of Amyloid
Formation (PY)
|
Student
talks on summer research projects.
Kara's abstract:
Transportation of cargo between the nucleus and cytoplasm via the
nuclear pore complex requires the assistance of multiple transport
proteins. This summer at the University of Connecticut Health Center I
used the Virtual Cell to model the nuclear transport system. Previous
models have assumed that all transport proteins are freely diffusing
and available for participation in transport. Recent experimental data,
however, shows that a certain percentage of molecules may not be able
to participate in these reactions because they are bound to immobile
partners. The Virtual Cell model takes into account these immobile
binding partners. Steady state concentrations as well as uptake data of
cargo into the nucleus were obtained experimentally and from the
Virtual Cell model for comparison.
Priscilla’s abstract:
The misfolding of proteins into beta sheets, and the subsequent
aggregation of these sheets into fibrous networks underlies many prion
and amyloid–related diseases such as the Alzheimers and Mad cow
disease. Structural details as well as insight into the mechanism of
aggregate stability may reveal vital ways to block the occurrence of
these fatal diseases. This talk is a presentation of a molecular
dynamics study of how aggregate structure and dynamics affects the
stability of H1, the most amyloidogenic fragment of the Syrian Hamster
Prion Protein and its mutations. The study’s results concur with the
experimental data that the B mutation, A117B, is much stable than A117
and is possibly the most stable mutation at the 117 residue position
due to its better packing and stacking.
|
Nov
15
5pm
|
Fan Chung Graham, UCSD
|
Random Graphs and Internet Graphs
|
Connecticut Valley Mathematics
Colloquium at Mount Holyoke.
We will discuss some recent developments on random graphs with given
expected degree distributions. Such ramdom graphs can be used to
model various very large graphs arising in Internet and
telecommunications. In turn, these "massive graphs" shed insights
and lead to new directions for random graph theory. For example, it can
be shown that the sizes of connected components depend primarily on the
average degree and the second-order average degree under certain mild
conditions. Furthermore, the spectra of the adjacency matrices of
some random power law graphs
obey the power law while the spectra of the Laplacian follow the
semi-circle law. We will mention a number of related results and
problems that are suggested by various applications of massive graphs.
Tea at 4:30 pm in 416 Clapp. Talk at 5:00 pm in 305 Kendade.
|
Nov 29
|
Christine von Renesse and Mairead Greene,
UMass
|
What's
Fun about Algebra and Geometry?
|
We
will talk about some fun, hands on problems which are easy to think
about. However, some abstract algebra and geometry are
needed to fully understand the solutions. We just want to talk
about some math we enjoy! Talk at 12:20 in 402 Clapp.
Pizza and beverages will be served at noon in 416 Clapp.
Christine
and Mairead are grad students in math at UMass .
|
Dec.
6
|
Alan Durfee, MHC
|
The
mathematics of bell-ringing
|
TBA
|
Dec 13
|
Everyone
|
End-of-term party!
|
Pizza, beverages AND special
goodies.
|
