| Date |
Spring 2008 Schedule
|
| March 31st |
Speaker: Monica Vazirani, UC Davis Title: Cores for partitions and the symmetric group Abstract: You cannot study the symmetric group without stumbling across partitions(or Young diagrams). Cores are special partitions that encode particular algebraic and representation-theoretic information about the symmetric group in characteristic p (for instance, the blocks). Cores also arise in the affine symmetric group, as well as in the affine Lie algebra $\widehat {\mathfrak sl}_n$. We will play with the combinatorics of cores and hint at why their role in all these settings is no mere coincidence. |
| April 7th |
Workshop Leader: Alethea Barbaro, UCSB Topic: Introduction to Mathjobs and finding academic positions online! Abstract: In the Hypatian Seminar, I will lead an interactive introduction on how to use Mathjobs, the website where $\mu$ a.e. academic mathematicians find job listings and apply for jobs. In the seminar, I will be able to access my mathjobs account and show how to navigate the site, both finding listings and actually applying for them. Even if you are very early in your grad school career, you should consider coming--seeing this might take the teeth out of applying for jobs when you get there! Feel free to bring questions about the application process!
|
| April 14th |
Speaker: Cathy Weinberger, UCSB Economics Dept. Title: Gender Differences at the Top of the "Ability" Distribution (or: Using Mathematical Modeling to Show why Larry Summers was Wrong) Abstract: Low representation in the extreme upper tail of the mathematics test score distribution is often assumed to explain the small numbers of women in engineering, mathematics, computer science and physical science (EMS) college majors and careers. However, this study finds that fewer than one-third of the college-educated white men in the EMS workforce had SAT-Math scores above the threshold previously presumed in the vocational psychology literature. The lower-scoring male EMS college graduates have more than an empty credential; they enjoy the same earnings advantage, relative to other college graduates with the same scores, as high scoring EMS majors. This study also finds that white women enter EMS fields at no more than half the rate of men with the same mathematics test scores. Both the large gender gap and the low ability threshold for EMS entry are robust to modeling mathematics test scores as a noisy measure of ability. |
| April 21st |
Speaker: Mary Bucholz and Elena Skapoulli, UCSB Linguistics Title: "What do you call an eigensheep?": Formulaic jokes as knowledge displays among undergraduate math and science students Abstract: For the past two years, we have been carrying out an NSF-sponsored study of social interaction among UCSB undergraduate science majors (including math, physics, and chemistry majors), with the goal of understanding how science-oriented interaction can help promote the retention of students, especially but not exclusively women, in these fields. In this informal talk, we'll present a brief orientation to the project and offer some of our initial findings on one area of our research that has emerged as particularly interesting: the role of science humor in students' displays of scientific knowledge. Interactional studies of scientific practice have focused extensively on what might be called "the serious side of science," such as the interpretation and representation of data. We argue that another key component of scientific cultural practice is the circulation of science-based humor, which helps scientists (and their students) position themselves as members of a scientific community. We show that science humor, like humor generally, operates in part as a “short intelligence test” (Sherzer 1985:219) that simultaneously allows the initiator to display specialized knowledge and demands that recipients offer a corresponding display of understanding. Among undergraduate students, such humor creates the opportunity to display a science-oriented identity by allowing even novices to lay claim to a degree of specialized expertise. |
| April 28th |
Speaker: Gwen Fisher, Cal Poly Abstract: Beaded beads are clusters of beads woven together with thread (usually around one or more large holes). Their groups of symmetries are classified by the three-dimensional finite point groups, i.e. the finite subgroups of the orthogonal group of degree three, O(3). Every finite subgroup of O(3) can be realized as the group of symmetries of a beaded bead. I will describe general weaving techniques to accomplish this feat, as well as examples of a beaded bead realizing many of the finite subgroup of O(3) or, in the case of the seven infinite classes of finite subgroups, at least one representative beaded bead for each class. Other mathematical applications of bead weaving will also be discussed including polyhedra, fractals, graph theory, surfaces, and knots. |
| May 5th |
Seminar is cancelled this week so we can all so see the film being presented by the PSTAT department about the life and Mathematics of Wolfgang Doeblin. Read flier at http://www.pstat.ucsb.edu/files/WolfgangDoeblin.pdf |
| May 12th |
Speaker: Erica Flapan Title: TBA Abstract:TBA |
| May 19th |
Speaker: TBA Title: TBA Abstract: TBA |
| May 26th |
Happy Memorial Day! |
| June 2nd |
Speaker: Luminita Vese, UCLA Title: TBA Abstract: TBA |