What is the mathematics behind origami? What can be achieved by just folding paper? We'll talk about the beautiful geometry underlying these questions and more, including a classical algorithm for solving polynomials with a turtle and more modern algorithm for solving cubic polynomials with a piece of paper. No background will be assumed and this…
Dating back to the 1600s modeling has been used to study cardiovascular dynamics enabling scientist to answer essential questions. In fact, todays knowledge that the cardiovascular system is circulating was first discovered via a mathematical model. In this talk I will discuss the role mathematical analysis has played in cardiovascular physiology and how we use…
The Robinson-Schensted-Knuth (RSK) correspondence is an important combinatorial bijection that associates to any permutation a pair of objects called standard Young tableaux. We will describe this correspondence in detail and discuss some interesting connections to combinatorics, algebra, and geometry. This talk will assume no background and will be accessible to all undergraduates.
Polytopes (also known in dimensions zero through three as "points", "line segments", “polygons", and “polyhedra") have been objects of interest to mathematicians throughout the recorded history of mathematics. Most notably, the five Platonic solids were probably known at least a thousand years before Plato. Regular polytopes are "as symmetric as possible" in a sense that…