12:00 - 12:50 PM, Wednesday, March 20, Gildemeister 155
Refreshments served beforehand Gildemeister 135.
Picking your NCAA Bracket with Linear Algebra
Department Seminar
Dr. Aaron Wangberg
Abstract: How do you pick your NCAA Bracket? Do you value home wins, early season games, and blowouts against Division II and III foes? Or is it better to base everything on the last five games of the season? Bring your computer to fill out your NCAA Bracket and hear the math that has helped WSU Linear Algebra students finish in the top 10% of ESPN's Bracket Challenge.
Department Colloquium
12:00 - 12:50 PM, Wednesday, March 6, Gildemeister 155
Refreshments served beforehand Gildemeister 135.
Squigonometry  Dr. Bill WoodUniversity of Northern Iowa |
| The trigonometric functions cosine and sine report the coordinates of a point on the unit circle at a given angle. The circle and its associated functions have perfect symmetry, which we will study by seeing what happens when we break it. The Euclidean unit circle has equation x^2+y^2=1, but we will change the 2's to p's in the distance function and study the curve with equation |x|^p+|y|^p=1. As p gets larger, the circle flattens out and looks more and more like a square; we thus call these curves "squircles." We will look at the analogues of the trigonometric functions in this family of geometries, called p-norms, and explore some interesting connections to special functions, calculus, and number theory. |
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)