Math Drudge

A workshop on the Sage mathematical software system will be presented at the upcoming MAA MathFest in Pittsburgh, PA (5-7 Aug 2010):

“Hands-On Explorations in Algebra and Combinatorics”

Neal Calkin, Clemson University
Dan Warner, Clemson University

Part 1: Tuesday, August 3, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm
Reception: 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm
Part 2: Wednesday, August 4, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm

In . . . → Read More: Short course on Sage at Pittsburg MathFest

Next week David H. Bailey of LBNL is giving the keynote speech at the “SHARCNet Research Day,” a meeting of researchers affiliated with Canada’s leading high-performance computing network. This will be held 6 May 2010 at York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The talk is entitled “Computing as the Third Mode of Scientific and . . . → Read More: Bailey to give keynote speech at SHARCNet Research Day

Our colleague Steven Strogatz has written a series of articles on mathematics, targeted to a “lay” reader, for the “Opinionator” series of the New York Times. Stogratz’s latest article reconstructs Archimedes’ discovery of how pi can be seen to be a limit of areas of inscribed and circumscribed polygons: Strogatz article on limits.

Strogatz’s other articles . . . → Read More: Steven Strogatz’s NY Times articles on math

University of Newcastle mathematician and Laureate Professor Jonathan Borwein is one of 17 scientists across Australia in 2010 to be elected to the Fellowship of the prestigious Academy of Science.

The Fellowship comprises Australia’s top scientists, recognised for research that has had a profound impact on the world’s scientific knowledge in fields including medicine, physics, mathematics and . . . → Read More: Borwein elected to Australian Academy of Science

March 29. Borwein participated in the Distinguished Lecturer Series in Mathematics and Applications at the University of South Australia, speaking on “Entropy and Projection Methods for Inverse Problems”. For details, see Announcement and Abstract.

Abstract: I shall discuss in “tutorial mode” the formalization of inverse problems such as signal recovery and option pricing; first . . . → Read More: Borwein participates in Distinguished Lecture Series at University of South Australia

On 8 Mar 2010 Jonathan M. Borwein gave the First Plenary Lecture on “Exploratory Experimentation and Computation” (Lecture) at the 2010 German Mathematical Society meetings in Munich. An associated paper, co-authored with David H. Bailey, is here: PDF.

Abstract:

The mathematical research community is facing a great challenge to re-evaluate the role of proof in . . . → Read More: Borwein gives lecture “Exploratory Experimentation and Computation”

Jonathan M. Borwein of the University of Newcastle (NSW, Australia) and Jon D. Vanderwerff of La Sierra University (California, USA) have published a new book “Convex Functions: Constructions, Characterizations and Counterexamples.” CARMA site | CUP site. Synopsis:

Like differentiability, convexity is a natural and powerful property of functions that plays a significant role in many . . . → Read More: Borwein and Jon Vanderwerff publish “Convex Functions”

On 3 Mar 2010 David H. Bailey of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab gave a “distinguished seminar” at the University of Delaware entitled “Computing as the Third Mode of Scientific Discovery.” The full lecture is available here: Online presentation.

Abstract:

The latest state-of-the-art scientific computer systems have achieved over 1 “Pflop/s” (one million billion floating-point arithmetic operations per . . . → Read More: Bailey gives lecture “Computing as the Third Mode of Scientific Discovery”