Undergraduate Mathematics Students
SUMS Conference, October 18, James Madison U., VA
CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR UNDERGRADUATE PAPERS AND POSTERS
SUMS Conference
October 18, 2008
James Madison University
Harrisonburg, Virginia (about two hours west of D.C.)
The fourth annual Shenandoah Undergraduate Mathematics and Statistics
(SUMS) Conference at James Madison University is a one-day undergraduate
research conference that will feature:
* undergraduate contributed talks on their mathematical research
* undergraduate and high school poster sessions on research and expository
topics
* panel sessions on REU programs, graduate school, and industry
* an opening address by Michael Mossinghoff, University of South Carolina
and Davidson College
* a closing address by Robin Wilson, Cal Poly Pomona
* a special AMC workshop for high school students and faculty
Last year, SUMS hosted 237 conference participants from 32 colleges and
universities and 14 high schools, and featured 28 student talks and 32
student posters.
Registration and lunch are free. Limited travel funds are available on a
rolling application basis. The deadline for registration and abstract
submission is October 3.
For more information, please contact either of the SUMS Directors at the
email addresses below. A poster for the conference is attached to this
email. Abstracts for the invited addresses are listed below. Visit
www.math.jmu.edu/SUMS for registration and scheduling information.
Thank you,
Elizabeth Brown (brownet@math.jmu.edu)
Laura Taalman (taal@math.jmu.edu)
SUMS Directors
Posted at 02:23PM Sep 05, 2008 by scroggs in Conferences and Meetings | Comments[0]
SUM Series: Math and pizza!
Come enjoy pizza while you listen to this week's SUM Series talk!
Tiling the Aztec diamond with dominoes
Nathan Reading
Thursday, September 11, 2008
3:00--3:50 p.m.
Harrelson 330
The study of domino tilings goes back to early 20th century physicists, who used domino tilings in a statistical-mechanical model of diatomic molecules on a surface. A domino is a 2-by-1 rectangle. Tiling a region in the plane by dominoes means completely covering the region with non-overlapping dominoes. Consider the following simple question: How many ways can a given region of the plane be tiled by dominoes? For example, there are two domino tilings of a 2-by-2 square. For a general rectangular region, the formula looks strange and is difficult to prove. For a different planar region called the Aztec diamond, the formula is quite simple. We'll discuss and illustrate a beautiful proof of the formula due to Elkies, Kuperberg, Larsen, and Propp. Time permitting, we'll also see what domino tilings have to do with the Arctic Circle.
The talk will be accessible to all undergraduates. No prior knowledge of tilings will be assumed.
Check out http://www4.ncsu.edu/~nreadin/sum for more information on the SUM Series.
Upcoming topics include:
Ranking sports teams with Google's PageRank.
Making the grad school decision.
The mathematics of financial risk.
The mathematics of voting.
An ancient algorithm for settling debts.
Math movie nite (afternoon)
TELL YOUR FRIENDS!
Posted at 11:14AM Sep 05, 2008 by nreadin in General | Comments[0]