Seminars and Colloquiums
for the week of April 21, 2008
Speakers:
Professor Jan Rosinski , Monday
Mr. Jim Lindsay, Wednesday
Mr. Jason Laska, Wednesday
Professor Greg Conner, Thursday
Monday, April 21
PROBABILITY SEMINAR – (continued)
TIME: 10:10 – 11:00 a.m.
ROOM: Ayres 309A
SPEAKER: Professor Jan Rosinski
TITLE: “On a cancellation property of sigma-finite measures with applications to inverse problems for regular variation, linear filters, and identification of stable laws.
Wednesday, April 23
ORAL SPECIALTY EXAM
TIME: 10:00 a.m.
PLACE: Ayres 218
SPEAKER: Mr. Jim Lindsay
COMMITTEE: Drs. Wagner (chair), Chen and Tzermias
ORAL SPECIALTY EXAM
TIME: 3:35 p.m.
PLACE: Ayres 309A
SPEAKER: Mr. Jason Laska
COMMITTEE: Drs. Anderson (chair), Dobbs and Mulay
Thursday, April 24
COLLOQUIUM
TIME: 3:40 – 4:30 p.m.
ROOM: Ayres 214
SPEAKER: Professor Greg Conner, BYU
TITLE: “A gentle introduction to fundamental groups of locally complicated spaces”
ABSTRACT: The fundamental group has been a central tool in mathematics ever since Poincare' first developed it as a tool to give a counterexample to his original version of the conjecture that
evolved into the well-known Poincare' conjecture. These groups have been extremely useful in many fields of mathematics in doing what Poincare' designed them to do -- tell different topological spaces apart -- and things he probably didn't imagine that they would be useful for. With applications from communications theory to geometry to physics, the fundamental group has proven to be an immensely profitable notion.
Work on computing fundamental groups has historically been restricted to spaces that are locally very nice, not locally complicated like a "fractal". Aside from a few classical results and examples by Higman and Griffiths not much was known about fundamental groups of spaces which were not simplicial complexes until several groups started working independently on locally complicated examples in the `90s.
Interested in giving or arranging a talk? Check out our calendar.
Previous Announcements:
Week of:
Seminars from 2006-2007 academic year