It�s taken a long time, but the Math Club is finally meeting again! This Thursday at 5pm EDT we are meeting in-person, outdoors this time, at the amphitheater outside Memorial Hall for the Fall Social. Come along and catch up with old faces, meet professors of courses you may be interested in taking, and, probably most importantly, make new friends with a shared interest in math! This is a great opportunity for freshmen to ground themselves in the university�s math community. Moreover, the Math Club is always a great place to get advice on your degree and future courses, especially from upper classmen who�ve taken higher courses. We�d also like to place special emphasis on the sophomores and juniors who missed many opportunities last year to form bonds with like-minded peers due to online classes. This is the chance to make up for lost time! Let�s rekindle this community by reconnecting with the wonderful people in it.

This Thursday, on September 23rd, from 5-6pm we will be hosting Joseph Cummings! Come to Patterson Office Tower room 745 to hear his fascinating talk on elliptic curves. In it, he will give examples of elliptic curves and show their application in cryptography. To quote the head of cryptography at Cloudflare, one of the largest web infrastructure and website security corporations, �Elliptic Curve Cryptography is one of the most powerful but least understood types of cryptography in wide use today.� As such, consider joining us to get a look at just what these mysterious objects are and how they can be used to create private connections. We look forward to seeing you there!

We welcome graduate student Allison Fitisone who will be giving a talk on their newest research: "A Cone Decomposition for Computing the Normalized Solid Angle Measure of Polyhedral Cones." A solid angle is like a field of view. In R^2, an entity has two lines marking the edges of their sight, and the solid angle is simply the angle formed from those two lines. Its measure can be calculated with the dot product. We can generalize this to three dimensions in which a solid angle is bounded by three vectors. The computation of this angle�s measure happens to be the scalar triple product of the vectors. What then of higher dimensions? Join us Thursday to take a deeper look into the inner workings of computing the solid angle measure of cones in higher dimensions.

This week we have a very special guest presenting. The experienced UK mathematics alumnus JT Ginn will give us a glimpse into the world of applied mathematics. What can of tasks do you solve? How do you solve them? What non-mathematical complications arise? And most importantly, where can a math degree take you? Join us this Thursday in POT 745 at 5pm to hear the stories of someone that's seen the field inside and out, from optimizing missile guidance, to tuning integrated circuits, to improving submarine stealth, and many more. There will be a Q&A section afterwards, so if you have any interest in applied math and industry experience then I highly recommend taking this opportunity to learn everything you can.

Have you settled into a new semester? Perhaps you�ve had a hard time meeting new like-minded people given the circumstances or just haven�t had the opportunity to interact with old friends in the math department. Whatever the reason, you�re just in time for the Math Club Spring Social! This Thursday at 5-6pm EST we�ll be hosting an informal get together on Zoom. Come join and tell us how you�ve been! And as always, feel free to discuss any math you�ve been thinking about. Hope to see you there!

Come explore the wonderful world of math videos on YouTube and see what niche topics math enthusiasts have crafted animated and well-articulated explanations of. You�re welcome to share any math content creators or specific videos you�ve found fun. Or, just sit back and watch what others have selected to roll.

One classic problem in quantitative finance is portfolio optimization, which consists of assigning weights to assets in a portfolio to maximize one�s expected return while keeping the level of risk at a desired level. This problem can be modeled as a linear program (LP), using a risk aversion parameter mu. For a given single value of mu, the LP can be solved using any standard LP solver. In this work, however, the problem is considered parametrically: the optimal solution is sought for every possible value of mu. This describes how weights to the portfolio assets would be assigned from the timid investor to the bold. This is accomplished by applying the novel technique of semialgebraic parametric analysis by metaprogramming (SPAM). Demonstrated in this talk is the method of applying SPAM to a textbook example of portfolio optimization. Generated in this way are numerical and symbolic representations of the solution set as well as a graphical representation of these results.

Math Club is on! From 5-6pm EDT is the Fall 2020 math club social! The event will be held entirely on Zoom. This will be a casual meeting including math majors, faculty, and generally anyone interested in mathematics! Introduce yourself and get to meet new and old faces. Give and get advice to fellow math students and share your passion for all things math. Most importantly, be yourself and have fun!

Pairwise connections are common in the world around us: friendships, hyperlinked pairs of web pages, cities connected by an interstate highway or a flight route, and more. The natural structure to model these situations is known as a graph or network. In this talk, we'll share a few famous graphs/networks, and discuss a few interesting properties of these objects.

Want to know more about a math major or minor? Want to discover interesting math classes and ask both professors and previous students about them? Then come to the Registration Social at 5-6pm EDT! In this semi-informal gathering you can learn about courses from both the professors teaching them and previous students. We also have unofficial major flowcharts in the resources section at the bottom of the page to give an easy visualization of the requirements for the mathematics major options and math econ.

It's that time of the year! Get your spook on this Thursday from 5-6pm EDT with our recently departed (graduated) students Tibor Burdette and Ian Stewart as they present their research on superabundant numbers! These numbers have been conjectured to have some nice properties, but perhaps they're trickier than we thought.

Every election season it's good to remind ourselves of the impact of seemingly arbitrary choices via their mathematical consequences. On the national level, there is no end to these conundrums, from the strange mathematical constraints of voting systems to the rounding problem of apportioning seats in the House. However, one issue has become notorious for how exploitable it is: gerrymandering. This Thursday from 5-6pm EST the Math Club will be hosting Professor Manon to tell us about this tactic. Can even our own map be used as a tool of voter discrimination? What does geometry have to do with an election? Come this Thursday for a rare glimpse into this fascinating topic.

Peer Tutoring has been established at our University for years, and we know that many of our math students have benefited from it. In light of this, how can we better prepare our tutors to teach their peers in this setting? Why isn't knowledge of content enough?

Join us for our usual beginning of the semester meet-and-greet event! We will introduce ourselves and tell you about some future events and opporuntities around the department towards the beginning but anyone can drop by from 5-6pm in POT 745.

Given two single-variable functions, we are allowed to take their composite to produce a new function again of a single variable. In this talk, we will investigate other contexts where "composition of functions" make sense. We will slowly broaden our definitions of "function" and "composition", starting with the types of functions that appear in the Calculus sequence, and moving to include well-behaved geometric figures. This will lead us to the abstract concept of an operad. We will give several examples, as well as an interpretation of what these new objects can do for us.

The undergraduate math club will be hosting the department tea on Friday Feb 7th, from 2:30-3:30 in POT 745. Come mingle with faculty and graduate students in a more casual setting. We will have tea, coffee, and cookies.

We will continue building a Menger Sponge from cardstock! Build info available here

TBA

The undergraduate math club will be hosting the department tea from 2:30-3:30 in POT 745. Come mingle with faculty and graduate students in a more casual setting. We will have tea, coffee, and cookies.

Thinking about taking a math class? Want to learn more about the math majors or minor? Want to talk to older math students and professors? Come to Math Club's informal advising meeting for all this and more! This is a casual gathering with no presentation or panel beyond introductions at the beginning. Unofficial major flowcharts are available below, under ``resources".

Cancelled due to suspension of in-personal classes for COVID-19

Join us for our usual beginning of the semester meet-and-greet event! We will introduce ourselves and tell you about some future events and opporuntities around the department towards the beginning but anyone can drop by from 5-6pm in POT 745. Free pizza as always!

One of the most interesting series we learn in Calculus is the Harmonic Series. It is interesting because it is the first example of a series that passes the Divergence Test but still diverges. This talk will look at how close the Harmonic Series is to converging. Specifically, we will see what numbers we have to remove in order to make the series converge. For example, we take the Harmonic Series but leave out the terms with a 9 in it. It turns out, this converges! This surprising result is bizarre and yet, as we will see in the talk, makes perfect sense.

This was a project suggested by one of our members. We will be attempting to build a level-2 menger sponge out of card stock according to instructions located here. We'll have the materials and instructions so just show up for a math-y project, snacks, and fun!

Many undergraduates at UKY do research over the summer in mathematics or related fields. At this meeting, four seniors will give short talks about their experiences from this past summer. This will include REUs in computer vision (Sean Grate; UKY), geometric group theory (Jessica Appel; GA Tech), and algebraic graph theory (Angela Vichitbandha; JMU) and a software engineering internship (Zack Newcomb; Dynetics, DoD contract).
This is a great opportunity to hear about interesting projects other undergrads have been involved with and hear about things you may want to do yourself!

In addition, this will be followed by a short resume workshop. We will have example resumes from older undergrads who have succesfully applied to various programs. Please feel free to bring a resume or outline of one for feedback from older students.

Suppose you write down a general polynomial in x, y, z and consider the surface of all points where it vanishes. What can you say about the family of lines contained in this surface? Are there no lines, a finite number of lines, infinitely many? We'll derive an expected dimension for the family of lines depending on the degree of the polynomial (and generalize this to more variables). There will be many examples and ``hands on demos."

The undergraduate math club will be hosting the department tea on Friday Sep 27th, from 2:30-3:30 in POT 745. Come mingle with faculty and graduate students in a more casual setting. We will have tea, coffee, and cookies.

Math Club and the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) will be hosting two info panels, one about graduate school and another about research experiences for undergrads (REUs). We will have current UK grad students and faculty talking about graduate school and undergrad and grad students and faculty talking about REUs. Both will feature their experiences, advice, and how to apply (we have several faculty who have experience with admission committees).

Please bring any questions if you have them!

Math Club and Society of Physics Students will be having a game night! Bring your own board games and we'll have pizza and snacks!

The undergraduate math club will be hosting the department tea on Friday Oct 25th, from 2:30-3:30 in POT 745. Come mingle with faculty and graduate students in a more casual setting. We will have tea, coffee, and cookies.

Thinking about taking a math class? Want to learn more about the math majors or minor? Want to talk to older math students and professors? Come to Math Club's informal advising meeting for all this and more! This is a casual gathering with no presentation or panel beyond introductions at the beginning. Unofficial major flowcharts are available below, under "resources".

We will introduce beautiful patterns of numbers called friezes, which are actively studied even today. In this talk, we will uncover the fascinating combinatorics behind friezes and their relations to polygons and triangulations. We will view these patterns in a geometric setting, and obtain many different ways of interpreting the numbers in a frieze.

Convolution is a mathematical operation defined on two functions,fandg, that produces a third function. This new function, denotedf∗g, is some-how a “blend Eoffandg. In the continuous case the blending is achieved viaintegration, whereas discrete convolution is defined via summation. This talkwill introduce the convolution operation in both the continuous and discretesettings, and for functions of one and two variables. We will then exploreapplications of convolution to digital image processing, with an emphasis onimage filtering in the spatial domain.

The undergraduate math club will be hosting the department tea on Friday November 22, from 2:30-3:30 in POT 745. Come mingle with faculty and graduate students in a more casual setting. We will have tea, coffee, and cookies.

The Undergraduate Math Lab will be having a poster session with students presenting current research from the Matriods (project leader Dr. Max Kutler), Morse Functions for Graphs (project leaders Br. Ben Braun and Julie Vega), Assingment Scheduling (project leader Dr. Kate Ponto), and Experiements with the Heisenburg Group (project leader Dr. Chris Manon) projects. More information for each project and the lab as a whole can be found on ukmathlab.

This will also be preceded by capstone presentations from the Lewis Honors College starting at 4:45. We will have Non-commutativity of Heisenberg Polytopes (Angela Vichitbandha with Dr. Chris Manon) and Game Theory and RandD (Kathryn Schantz with Dr. Adib Bagh).

A casual meet-and-greet, including a brief talk about getting involved with the undergraduate Geometry Lab. 5 to 6 pm in POT 745 with free pizza as always!

What do antiderivatives of e^{x^2} have in common with voltages in an electric circuit? Both live in a torsor! As this question suggests, torsors show up all over math and physics. While the concept is relatively simple, learning to recognize torsors can lead to deep insights. In this talk, I'll convince you that you already know what torsors are, show you several examples, and tell you about some of the deeper implications.
I won't assume any special background knowledge. However, if you have seen some group theory, then this talk should be especially accessible.

Join us at the Math House for board games and pizza! Feel free to bring your own games if you want to (we will have several).

The undergraduate math club will be hosting the department tea on Friday Feb 8th, from 2:30-3:30 in POT 745. Come mingle with faculty and graduate students in a more casual setting. We will have tea, coffee, and cookies.

Cameron and Fon-der-Flaass studied a simple action on piles of cubes stacked in the corner of a room. The dynamics are nonetheless quite mysterious! In particular, repeating this action will always eventually return the original pile, but sometimes the voyage is much longer than expected. Separately, motivated by problems in algebraic geometry, Thomas and Yong introduced combinatorial algorithms on certain grids of numbers. In particular, there is a beautiful K-theoretic promotion operator, which again has mysteriously large orbits, despite its simple combinatorial definition. We'll see how these two mysteries are in fact the same mystery, and use this relation to explain special cases of both actions. (Based on joint work with Kevin Dilks and Jessica Striker)

The last Friday of every month from 2:30-3:30 in POT 745

A speaker from General Electric, Michael Blum will be talking about the mathematics of GE's induction cooktops and working in industry.

Intuitively, one may think that there are more integers than primes, but under Cantor set theory both collections are of the same size. In this framework we will be proving two other surprising correspondences. In the first part it will be shown that the real line and the complex plane not only possess the same number of elements but in fact have equivalent structures under addition. In the second, it will be shown that there are as many real numbers as there are continuous real-valued functions.

An informal advising meeting for talking to professors and other students about next semester's classes, the math major, or anything math-ish. This is a casual gathering with no presentation or panel beyond introductions at the beginning. Unofficial major flowcharts are now available below, under "resources".

Topology is often called "rubber sheet geometry" and is described as "floppy" while geometry is more "rigid". Symplectic geometry, the natural geometry of classical mechanics, is floppier than Riemannian geometry but more rigid than topology. I will give an overview of this floppy/rigid spectrum. We will then explore how the geometry and topology of symmetries in this context relate to properties of polytopes, motivated by many pictures and examples. I will conclude with how some of my recent work, joint with Daniel Cristofaro-Gardiner, Alessia Mandini and Ana Rita Pires, comes to feature continued factions, counting lattice points, and the Philadelphia subway system.
more information here

The last Friday of every month from 2:30-3:30 in POT 745 Alumni day will take place of usual tea. More information available under "external events".

I have always been fascinated by the relationship between pattern, prediction, order and disorder. Mathematics is the perfect language to describe the evolution of patterns, and music is a great way to listen to them. My first career as a musician led to a new career in mathematics, as I pursued patterns and prediction through the study of dynamical systems and ergodic theory. In more recent years, I have discovered that mathematical descriptions of physical processes can be used to address problems in medicine, such as understanding how cancer evolves, or developing treatment strategies. In this talk I will describe my own journey from musician to mathematician to modeler, highlighting this path with mathematical examples.

Join us for the last math club-hosted tea of the semester. There will be tea, coffee, and cookies. 2:30-3:30 in POT 745. (Moved from April 26 due to conflicts.)

A casual meet-and-greet. As always, 5pm in POT 745, with free pizza.

Come play some board games and party games with other math undergrads, graduates, and post-grads! Joining us will be Mike Hill from UCLA, the invited Hayden-Howard speaker.

Consider a flock of chickens. In any pair of chickens, one pecks the other. However, there might not necessarily be a chicken who pecks every other bird. Instead, we call a "king chicken" one that, for every other chicken in the flock, either pecks that chicken, or pecks a chicken who pecks it. By representing each chicken as a vertex and each pecking relationship with an edge, we can use graph theory to examine chicken politics. We will see every flock has a king, but this king is not necessarily unique, or even uncommon.

Many undergraduates at UKY do research over the summer in mathematics or related fields. At this meeting, we will have several different groups give short talks about their summer research experiences. Two students will speak about research they did at Research Expereince for Undergraduates (REU) programs, one will speak about work at Oak Ridge National Lab, and a small group will talk about work at the UK Math Lab.

This will be a good chance to listen to accessible, exciting math that your classmates have been working on, and here about these opportunities.

From 4:30-5:15, we will have an REU Panel, where we will have current undergraduate and graduate students who can talk about REUs, and how they are helpful, and faculty who have decided acceptance for REUs.

From 5:15-6:00, we will have a Graduate School panel, which has current graduate students who can talk about what graduate school is like and if its the right decision for you, and faculty who have worked on admissions committees.

These panels will also have open question-and-answer opportunities.

This meeting will be an informal advising meeting, where you are welcome to come mingle with professors and ask them about potential classes, the math major, and just math in general. This won't be a panel or presentation session, just a casual gathering to talk about math.

When a large group of people have to make a decision together, bad things can happen. For example, suppose that 10 people are trying to decide where to go to dinner together. Suppose that 4 of them want to go to Mellow Mushroom, and the remaining 6 realize that Mellow Mushroom is horrible and disgusting, and would prefer to go to literally any other restaurant. If the remaining 6 are divided between 3 or 4 different restaurants, a strict plurality system will force them to go to Mellow Mushroom, even though a majority would prefer any other choice.

It seems, then, that the plurality system is unfair. What could we do to make it fair? Which election systems are the most fair? What does "fair" mean anyway? Come and find out!

Also, I will give you candy.

Dr. Abouzaid will discuss career paths for students interested in mathematics and finance drawing on her own experience going from a BS in math and physics and a PhD in experimental high energy physics to jobs at a custodial bank, a university endowment, and a hedge fund. From the perspective of an employer, she will describe the skills that are valued in the finane industry, ranging from those that are purely technical and quantitative to those involving communication skills.

Presented with the Gatton College of Business and Economics and the Mathematical Economics Program.

How can someone graphically display a network of chemical reactions? One answer is a Kirchhoff graph. Kirchhoff graphs can be used as circuit diagrams for chemical reaction networks. This talk will explain how this is done, as well as discussing the basic mathematical properties of Kirchhoff graphs. It should be accessible to students currently taking second-year undergrad mathematics courses; no particular background in chemistry is assumed. The last 10-15 minutes of the talk will discuss the WPI graduate mathematical sciences programs.

Why does the practice of mathematics often fall short of our ideals and hopes? How can deeply human themes motivate our students to do and study mathematics? I have been advancing the message that mathematics help people flourish, no matter what they choose to do with their lives or careers. I will explain why I believe this is an important message, especially for educators, and describe some of the reactions I've received.

We've all seen how to do induction and recursion up the natural numbers. But what if we could keep going? I'm going to give a light introduction to ordinals and cardinals, and then I'll discuss some neat applications with whatever time remains. Did you know that there is a subset of the plane that intersects every line in exactly two points? Or that three-dimensional Euclidean space can be decomposed as a disjoint union of radius one circles? Come find out why!

In the geometry of solids, we often measure the volume, a 3-dimensional concept, and surface area, a 2-dimensional concept. We will talk about a lesser-known 1-dimensional measurement with the help of our faithful dog Fido. We will use this measurement to show that the Russian system of shipping boxes cannot be cheated!

Three current undergraduates, Neelav Dutta, Erin Wood, and Emily Dautenhahn, talk about their REU experiences and their work they did over the summer.

Join us while the Graduate School and REU Panel talks and answers questions about applying for these programs, and what the experience is like.

This meeting will be an informal advising meeting, where you are welcome to come mingle with professors and ask them about potential classes, the math major, and just math in general. This won't be a panel or presentation session, just a casual gathering to talk about math.

After, the AWM is sponsoring an undergraduate boardgame/craft night in the Mathskellar.

In classical mechanics, we may study the movement of an object using a differential equation. As an example, consider a spherical pendulum swinging from a string. The pendulum will carve out circles with each orbit and this can be described using the phase curves of the differential equation. If we assign a point to each phase curve then we can define a map, which can be extended to a map from a three dimensional sphere to a two dimensional sphere. Surprisingly, this map is exactly the Hopf map, which is very important to algebraic topologists because it is an example of a map between different dimensional spheres that cannot be contracted to a point. My talk will explore this surprising connection between classical mechanics and algebraic topology.

Come to this math club meeting so I can tell you about the undergraduate experimental mathematics lab I'm starting next semester! I'd like you to have the opportunity to participate in research, and also help to create visualizations of mathematical objects. I'll show you some things I did at a previous lab, and tell you about some of the activities we'll have here at UK.

The Society of Physics Students will be hosting a game night starting at 6:15 in Chem-Phys 155. All welcomed!

The Association for Women in Math will be hosting a game night in the Math House at 4 pm. All welcomed and feel free to bring games!

UK participates in the VA Tech compeititon. Please refer to Prof. Sathaye's website for more information.

UK participates in the William Lowell Putnam Competition. Please refer to Prof. Sathaye's website for more information.

MCM is a contest where teams of undergraduates use mathematical modeling to present their solutions to real world problems.

If you are interesting in participating or learning more, check out their website above, or contact Peter Bonventre.

The Kentucky Section of the Mathematical Association of America (KYMAA) is devoted to promoting and encouraging the study, the teaching, and the learning of mathematics in the state of Kentucky.

Our invited speakers are Michael Dorff (Brigham Young University; MAA President) How Mathematics Is Making Hollywood Movies Better, Dominic Klyve (Central Washington University; editor of The College Mathematics Journal) Great Fights! The Seedy Underbelly of Mathematical History and Dave Coulliette (Asbury University; winner of the 2018 KYMAA Distinguished Teaching Award) What Do (Computational) Mathematicians Do?.

The UK Math Department will be welcoming three alumni to give talks for current faculty and students. Please come for one, two, or all. There will be a reception as well. For more information, please check the link.

I will explain a notion of arithmetic equidistribution that has recently found application in the study of complex dynamical systems. It was first introduced about 25 years ago, by Szpiro-Ullmo-Zhang, to analyze the geometry and arithmetic of abelian varieties. In 2011, Matt Baker and I used the theory to study periodic points of maps on P^1. In this talk, I will explain some dynamical questions that were inspired by questions about elliptic curves, and then how the dynamical results allowed us to solve problems in the original setting of abelian varieties. The new results are joint with Holly Krieger and Hexi Ye.

The Hayden Howard is an annual lecture series in honor of mathematic professors Thomas Hayden and Henry Howard. Please click the link for more information.

Students will be presenting research conducted within the Undergrad Math Lab. Details, including time and location, to come.

Scientist (Robotics) and cartoonist (Ph.D. Comics) Jorge Cham, PhD, will present two free talks on the University of Kentucky campus: "Communicating Your Research", 10-11am in the UK Student Center, and "The Power of Procrastination", 4-5pm in Memorial Hall.

Tickets are needed, but free! See the above link or this poster for more details.

Origami artist and scientist Robert Lang will visit the University of Kentucky on Monday and Tuesday, 22-23 October 2018 to give a public lecture and hold several workshops for students. Space is limited at the workshops, so click here to register and see more information.

Robert Lang's website is also full of interesting videos and information, and can be found here.

Talks on many different topics in mathematics. Student presentations welcome!

Plenary talks by Dr. Thomas Grandine of Boeing, and Professor Jason Cantarella of the University of Georgia.

The Kentucky Section of the Mathematical Association of America (KYMAA) is devoted to promoting and encouraging the study, the teaching, and the learning of mathematics in the state of Kentucky.

The invited speakers for this year's meeting are Susan Jane Colley (Oberlin College; editor of The American Mathematical Monthly) Counting Curves: Tales from the Enumerative Crypt, Paul Pollack (University of Georgia) and Steve Wilkinson (Northern Kentucky University; winner of the 2017 KYMAA Distinguished Teaching Award) What Do Mathematicians Do? (How I learned to appreciate matrix decomposition).

The University of Tennesee Mathematics Department will be hosting its Twelfth Annual Undergraduate Math Conference on Saturday, April 21, 2018. This conference will give undergraduate students an opportunity to present their mathematical research, to meet other undergraduates, and hear about their research. Everyone is invited to attend.

This year's invited speaker is Dr. Jessica Matthews of North Carolina Institute for Climate Studies, who will speak on Mathematics in Climate Science.