Mathematics Colloquium

A weekly series of talks given by Humboldt Mathematics faculty and guest speakers.

Unless indicated otherwise, all talks are held Thursdays at 4:00pm in BSS 166. 

If you would like to recieve emails for any of these events, please email math@humboldt.edu.

2023-2024

March 21 - Module Categories: Why We Care, and How to Find Them - Caleb Hill (University of New Hampshire, Mathematics & Statistics (Ph.D. Candidate))

March 7 - How to Accidentally Program a Supercomputer? - Dr. Ken Owens (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics)

February 29 - Shallow- and Deep-Water Ocean Waves: Deconstructing the Dispersion Relation - Dr. Tamara Beitzel Barriquand (Cal Poly Humboldt, Oceanography and  Physics & Astronomy)

February 22 - A World from a Sheet of Paper (Video from the Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures) - Dr. Tadashi Tokieda (Stanford, Mathematics) 

February 15 - Navajo Math Circles - A film by George Paul Csicsery

February 8 - Forgetful Observations on Sudoku Solutions and the Phistomefel Ring - Dr. Joe Carroll (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics)

November 30 - Language as a Softening Liquid - Dr. Peter Overholser (Schatz Energy Research Center)

November 16 - Transformations and Symmetry - Dr. Brandon Ashley (Southern Oregon University, Mathematics) 

November 9 - Secrets of the SurfaceThe Mathematical Vision of Maryam Mirzakhani - A film by George Csicsery 

November 2 - What is Data Science? What Does a Data Scientist Do? - Dr. Rosanna Overholser (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics) 

October 27 (Friday) - Clocks, Parking Garages, and the Solvability of the Quintic: A Friendly Introduction to Monodromy - Dr. Edray Goins (Pomona College, Mathematics) 

October 19 - The Microscopic World of Piecewise Isometries - Dr. Arek Goetz (San Francisco State University, Mathematics)

October 16 (Monday) - Online Trend Estimation and Detection of Trend Deviations in Sub-sewershed Time Series of SARS-CoV-2 RNA Measured in Wastewater - Dr. Julia Schedler (Rice University, Statistics)

October 12 - Integer Cokernels and Fragmented Tilings - Dr. Alex McDonough (UC Davis, Mathematics)

October 5 - No colloquium lecture

September 28 - Encryption via Permutations and Breaking the Enigma Machine - Dr. Tyler Evans (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics)

September 21 - Hyperbolic Tessellations and the Art of M.C. Escher - Dr. Martha Byrne (Sonoma State University, Mathematics and Statistics)

September 14 - The Intersection of Mathematics and Art Cognitions - The Great Wave off Kanagawa and The Fibonacci Spiral - Mr. Tuto Lopez Gonzalez (San Francisco State University, Mathematics)

September 7 - The Mysterious Linking of the Borromean Rings Explained: A Geometric Picture of Milnor’s Link Invariants - Dr. Anna Cepek (University of Oregon, Mathematics)

August 31 - A Cautionary Tale in Applied Statistics - Dr. John G Williams (Environmental Scientist, retired, and veteran of the Central Valley water wars)

2022-2023

April 27 - How to Build and Program a Supercomputer - Dr. Ken Owens and Charlin Duff (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics) 

April 20 - From the Heavens to the Earth: The Mercurial Tale of Spherical Trigonometry - Dr. Glen Van Brummelen (Trinity Western University, Dean of the Faculty of Natural and Applied Sciences)

April 13 - A New Kind of Music - Emma Modrick (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics and Oceanography)

April 6 - The Poincare Disk and the Hyperquilt:  Easing into models of the hyperbolic plane - Dr. Carol Keig (Sonoma State, Mathematics and Statistics)

March 30 - The Geometry of Numbers - Dr. Dibyajyoti Deb (Oregon Institute of Technology, Mathematics)

March 23 - The Paradoxes of the Game Penney Ante - Philip Farmer

March 9 - Surprising Connections in Number Theory - Dr. Daniel Martin (UC Davis, Mathematics) [Cancelled]

March 2 - Informing students about Cal-Bridge and REUs - Dr. Chris Dugaw (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics)

February 23 - Introduction to PythonPython vs. R - Dr. Yoon Kim (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics)

February 16 - Towards Open Science Using GitHub and R Markdown - Mr. Judson Fisher (Cal Poly Humboldt, Fisheries, Forestry Watershed & Wildland Sciences Graduate Student)

February 9 - Darts-Visualizing Probability: Simulations, Graphs & Mapping Diagrams - Dr. Martin Flashman (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics (Emeritus))

February 2 - Mathematical Trinities - Mystery & Beauty of Mathematics - Dr. Andrew Conner (St. Mary’s College of California, Mathematics & Computer Science)

December 1 - SoME1 -  Winners - Dr. Jeff Haag (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics)

November 24 - No colloquium lecture (fall break)

November 17 - No colloquium lecture

November 10 - Calculus Gems: Brief Lives and Memorable Mathematics - Dr. Jeff Haag (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics)

November 3 - Fourier Series: The Beauty of Circular Motion, part II - Dr. Walden Freedman (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics)

October 27 - A Deep Dive into (the best show ever) Futurama - Dr. Chris Harmon (Cal Poly Humboldt, Chemistry)

October 20 - No colloquium lecture

Friday, October 14 - "On the (t, r) Broadcast Domination Number of Graphs" - Dr. Pamela E. Harris (University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Mathematics)

October 6 - "Binary Logistic Regression and the Maximum Likelihood Estimator" - Dr. Joseph Carrol (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics)

September 29 - "Pascal’s Mystic Hexagon" - Dr. Peter Goetz (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics)

September 22 - "An Introduction to Model Selection and Causal Diagrams" - Dr. Rosanna Overholser (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics)

September 15 - "A Brief Introduction to Check Digits" - Dr. Tyler Evans (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics

September 8 - "W, H, A, T, S, _, N, E, X, ..." - Dr. Peter Overholser (Oregon Institute of Technology, Mathematics)

September 1 - "Wave-driven Changes in Beach Sand Levels" - Dr. Bonnie Ludka (Cal Poly Humboldt, Environmental Resource Engineering and Mathematics)

2021-2022

April 7 - "A Geometer’s view of Statistical Inference and Machine learning" - Dr. Jesús De Loera

March 3 - "Stability Analysis with Fourier Transforms" - Dr. Ken Owens

February 24 - "Taming tensors" - Dr. Peter Brooksbank

February 17 - "An Invitation to Invariant Theory" - Dr. Frank Moore

February 10 - "Romancing the Triples" - John Martin

December 9 - "What are we actually modeling? Movement, assumptions, and imperfect detection complicate estimates of animal abundance." - Dr. Frank Fogarty

November 4 - "The (possible) shapes of space: 3-dimensional topology and geometrization" - Dr. Stephen Trettel

October 28 - "Teaching Undergraduate Data Science at UC Berkeley with Jupyter notebooks:  pathways for curricular innovation" -  Dr. Eric Van Dusen

October 21 - "Opportunities to Teach Empathetic Critical Thinking through Modeling" - Prof. Beth Burroughs

October 14 - "Secret Code Girls of World War II" - Liza Mundy

October 7 - "Fourier Series: The Beauty of Circular Motion" - Dr. Walden Freedman

September 23 - "Introduction to BA 422: Financial Data Analytics and Econometrics" - Dr. Ramesh Adhikari

September 16 - "Michael's Card Shuffling Problem: An Inductive Inquiry into Derangements" - Dr. Joe Carroll

September 9 - " Survival Analysis, Mixture Distributions, and Individual Heterogenity" - Dr. Chris Dugaw

 

2020-2021

April 29 - " Real Partners for Real Analysis: An Academic Support Program for Students" - Drs. Abigail Higgins and Sayonita Ghosh Hajra

April 22 - "A Counting problem for Standard Young Tableaux with a given shape and a major index" - Dr. Lipika Deka

April 15 - "A Virtual Summer at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory" - Dr. Jessica De Silva

April 8 - "Humanizing Online STEM Courses" - Dr. Sarah Williams

April 1 - "Primes, sieves and pentiums: A tale from the 90's" - Dr. Kevin McGown

March 25 - "A Freshmen Level Computational Linear Algebra Course" - Dr. Laura Chowdury

March 4 - "Learning Through the Triad: Cryptography, Theory, and Programming" - Dr. Jeff Meyer

January 21 - "A Mathematical and Historical Treatment of Timekeeping" - Dr. Chris Dugaw

January 28 - "A conversation about teaching with two Humboldt Math Education alumni"

2019-2020

March 12 - "Advances in Spatially Balanced Sampling: The HIP and BAS Methods" - Dr. Trent McDonald

March 5 - "Using Pre-College Student Attitudes and Demographics to Predict STEM Career Interest" - Alana Unfried

February 27 - "A Brief Encounter with the Distributional Kind" - Ellery Ames

February 13 - "The Spiritual Side of Mathematics" - John Martin

February 6 - "Irrational and Transcendental Numbers" - Kevin McGown

December 19 - "Catching Internal Waves in the Ocean: The Mathematics of Internal Waves and Turbulence in the Ocean" - Tamara Barraquand

November 14 - "Two Videos by 3Blue1Brown"

November 7 - "Classifiers for Predicting Undergraduate Computer Science Performance" - Sherrene Bogle

October 31 - "Tricks & Treats" - Brad Ballinger

October 24 - "Public Key Cryptography" - Adamou Fode Made

October 17 - "Bertrand's Paradox (i) from R simulation and (ii) from the Bayesian Perspective" - Yoon Kim

October 3 - "Restricted Patterns of the Past, Present, and Future" - Zvezdelina Stankova

September 26 - "False Position" - Walden Freedman

September 19 - "Circles in Polygons" - Tyler Evans

September 12 - "What's Wrong with Statistical Significance Tests: An Example from Environmental Flow Assessment" - John Williams

September 5 - "Linear Algebra and Mapping Diagrams: Old and New Visualizations with GeoGebra" - Martin Flashman 

2018-2019

May 2 - "Introduction to the geometric product and the geometric algebras G2 and G3" - Tim Lauck

April 25 - "Mathematical Art from Complex Analysis" - Frank A. Farris

April 18 - "Principal Component Analysis- An Explanation and an Application" - Michael Wilson & Peter Oliver

April 11 - "Relevant Advances and Applications of Occupancy Models" - Larissa Bailey

April 4 - "Points, Polytopes, and Polynomials" - Katharina Jochemko

March 28 - "An Interfering Paths Approach to Understanding Quantum Mechanics" - Ken Owens

March 7 - "There are Infinitely Many Universes on My Beach Ball! Surprising Facts, Useful Tools, and New Results in Topology" - Leanne Merrill

February 28 - "Empirical Likelihood for Detecting Changes in Time Series Models" - Ramadha Piyadi Gamage

February 21 - "Applied Approaches to Missing Data"

February 14 - "A Comparison of Statistical Models with Longitudinal Data: An Application to Outpatient Clinical Treatment for Problem Drinkers" - Judith Canner

January 31 - "Musings on Multiplicative Functions" - Tyler Evans

November 15 - Must See Math Videos hosted by Jeff Haag

November 8 - "From Permutations to Slopes: A Suprising Example of Generating Functions" - Warren Staley

October 25 - "Equations over Finite Groups and a new Perspective on 'Solvability'" - Alon Amit

October 18 - "Using in situ meansurements and numerical models to investigate subsurface coastal ocean transport" - Jacob S. Partida

October 11 - "Perplex vs. Complex" - Walden Freedman

October 4 - "Heat and Mass Transfer in Soil with Application to Seasonal Renewable Energy Storage and Enviornmental Remediation" - Ali Moradi Gharehtapeh

September 27 - "Radioactive Pi" - Chris Dugaw

September 20 - "Investigation of Surfaces using the Diffuse Reflectance Infrared Fourier Transform Spectroscopy Technique" - Chris Harmon

September 13 - "How Many Ways can you solve a Quadratic Euation Visually? From the Greeks to 21st Century Technology" - Martin Flashman

September 6 - "A Brief Introduction to Elliptic Curves" - Peter Goetz

2017-2018

May 2 - "The Many Faces of Dispersive Equations" - Gigliola Staffilani

April 26 - "An Introduction to the Change Point Problem and Applications to Stock Market Data" - Abeer Hasan

April 19 - "Hyperoperation Absurdity" - Brian Stonelake

April 12 - Student Results of the Mathematical Contest in Modeling

April 5 - An Introduction to Bayesian Statistics - Edward Roualdes

March 29 - Slide Rules - Ken Yanosko

March 22 - Cold Fusion/LENR Update - Robin Carter

March 8 - Applications of Quantile Regression in Ecology - Barry Noon

February 22 - Mathematical Games and Puzzles, Part 2 - Brad Ballinger

February 15 - "Building Your Career in the Exciting World of Data Science - Jim Hetrick and Rick Hutley

February 8 - "Surreal Numbers and Combinatorial Games" - Andrew Conner

February 1 - Mathematical Games and Puzzles - Brad Ballinger

January 25 - Introductory LaTeX Workshop - Brad Ballinger

November 30 - "Bézout's Theorem: A Tale of Two Curves" - Pete Goetz

November 16 - Mathematics Videos

November 9 - "PIC Math Course: Preparing to Enter Non-Teaching Careers" - Bori Mazzag

November 2 - "Solar Energy Soiling:  The Problem, Experiments, and Model Development" - Liza Boyle

October 26 - "Foolhardy Forays into Generalizations of the Collatz Conjecture" - Erik Knutsen

October 19 - Video Conference with an Humboldt Graduate - Valerie Yellam - PDF

October 12 - "Three-term Arithmetic Progressions" - Hans Parshall, The Ohio State University

October 5 - "The Joy of Mathematical Games" - Video by Arthur Benjamin

September 28 - "Conics in Euclidean, Projective, and Hyperbolic Planes" - Dale Oliver

September 21 - "Mathematical Puzzle Party"

September 12 - "Can't you just feel the Moonshine?" - Ken Ono

September 7 - "Quadratic Residues and Primative Roots" - Kevin McGown

August 24 - "Solving Polynomial Equations: Visualization from Linear to Cubic, from Rational to Complex Numbers" - Martin Flashman

2016-2017

April 27 - "The Maxwell-Wiechert Model of Viscoelasticity" - Joseph Carroll

April 20 - "Dividing a Square into Triangles: Combinatorial Topology meets the 2-adic Absolute Value" - Peter Goetz

Apr 13 - "The Jewel in the Crown: Quadratic Reciprocity" - Rick Luttmann

Apr 6 - "64=65? Lewis Carroll: Puzzling Mathematician & Mathematical Puzzler" - Stuart Moskowitz

Mar 30 - "Alumna Interview: Profile of a Non-Academic Career Path in Mathematics" - Jennifer Sorkin (via Skype)

Mar 23 - "Spatial Capture-Recapture:  Integrating Observations and Ecological Theory" - Andy Royle

Mar 9 - "Understanding Quasars: The Study of Galaxies far, far away...." - Paola Rodrigues Hidalgo 

Mar 2 - "Vector-Valued Modular Forms and the Bounded Denominator Conjecture" - Christopher Marks

Feb 23 - "The Electoral College vs. The Popular Vote or Balinski and Young vs. Kenneth Arrow" - Charlie Biles

Feb 16 - "Summing it Up" - A Video presentation of a talk given at Google by Avner Ash and Robert Gross on August 23, 2016

Feb 9 - "Feel the Bern - The Bernoulli Numbers" - Jeff Haag

Feb 2 - "Combinatorial Fixed Point Theorems" - Francis Su

Jan 26 - "Connections Beyond the Margins of the Grid" - Peter Alstone

Dec 1 - "intrinsic Properties of Graphs Embedded in R3" - Erica Flapan

Nov. 17 - "Counting from Infinity: Yitang Zhang and the Twin Prime Conjecture" - film by George Csicery, ZALA films, MSRI

Nov. 10 - "A Mathematician's View on Quantum Mechanics" - Kenneth Owens

Nov. 3 - "Mathematical Modeling in Ecology" - Christopher Dugaw

Oct. 27 - "Mathematical Origami: Forcing Sets for Miura Folding Patterns" - Brad Ballinger

Oct. 20 - "Teaching and Learning Mathematics with a Growth Mindset" - Dale Oliver

Oct. 13 - "Modeling Carbon Nanotube Networks" - Ruth Saunders

Oct. 6 - "A Trip through the Numerical-Galaxy Zoo" - Ellery Ames

Sept. 29 - "Planning for Uncertainty: Power Planning Models for the Northwest" - Steven Simmons

Sept. 22 - "No Punt Intended" - Katharine Gray

Sept. 15 - "Statistical and Ecosystem Modeling in Support of Ecosystem Approaches to Fisheries Management" - Andre Buchheister

Sept. 8 - "A Selection from Kvant Selecta:  On Removing Parentheses with D.B. Fuchs" - Tyler Evans 

Sept. 1 - "Waste-to-Reuse: Novel Membrane-Based Processes for Resource and Energy Recovery" - Kerri Hickenbottom

2015-2016

Apr. 28 - "Constitutive Modeling of Polymeric Foams and Finite Element Simulation of Chip Formation in Metal Cutting"

Apr. 21 - "Supercomputing and Quantum Tunneling"

Apr. 14 - "The Great Math Mystery" - Nova Series

Apr. 7 - "Chaos from Simple Trigonometry" - Rick Luttman

Mar. 24 - "Tensors and Their Eigenvectors" - Bernd Sturmfels

Mar. 10 - "Proofs from the Other Book" - Ken Yanosko

Mar. 3 - "Complex Variables: Mapping Diagrams for Visualizing Complex Arithmetic and Functions Dynamically with GeoGebra" - Martin Flashman

Feb. 25 - "From the Abacus to the iPhone" - John Martin

Feb. 18 - "Little Things that Run the Savanna" - Daniel Doak

Feb. 11 - "Competition: Some Insights from Individual-based Models" - Rollie Lamberson

Feb. 4 - "Weird Means to an End: An Introduction to Functional Equations" - Walden Freedman 

Jan. 28 - "Optimization inspired by biology: parameter fitting using the genetic algorithm” - Bori Mazzag

Dec. 10 - "Can Dolphins Communicate Abstract Ideas?" - Abeer Hasan

Dec. 3 - "The Math Life" - Wendy Conquest, Bob Drake & Dan Rockmore

Nov. 19 - "Synchronicity: Alternating Sums, Exclusion, and Determinants" - Jennifer J. Quinn

Nov. 12 - "Formative Fun" - Michael Butler

Nov. 5 - "N is a Number" - film hosted by Dr. Walden Freedman

Oct. 29 - "Restricted Central Extensions of Modular Witt Algebras" - Dr. Tyler Evans

Oct. 22 - No Colloquium

Oct. 15 - "The History of Congressional Apportionment Through a Mathematical Lens" - Dr. Charles Biles

Oct. 8 - "Pattern-oriented modeling for design and validation of individual-based wildlife models: the Jamaica coffee farm example" - Dr. Steve Railsback

Sept. 24 - "Proof the Square root of 2 is Irrational and an Introduction to Convexity" - Dr. Richard Spjut

Sept. 17 - "Positroids, 1/e², and a conjecture of Da Silva” - Dr. Federico Ardila

Sept. 8 - "Tsunami Propagation over Underwater Obstacles" - Dr. Sergei Fomin

Sept. 3 - "Let's Get Series About Calculus" - Dr. Jeff Haag

2014-2015

April 30 - "Is Mathematics Biology's Next Microscope?" - Dr. Kamila Larripa

April 23 - "Quantum Tunneling and Computation" - Dr. Kenneth Owens

April 16 - "WebWork: An Open Source Alternative" - Tim Lauck and Tim Payer

April 6 - "A Computational Mathematician Combusts" - Dr. Margot Gerritsen

March 12 - "Professors Pondering Pi" - Drs. Dale Oliver and Jeff Haag

March 5 - "A Tribute to Euler" - Dr. William Dunham (video)

February 26 - "Evidence, Errors and AIC" - Dr. Brian Dennis

February 19 - "Dirac's Belt Trick, the iPad®, and Quaternions" - Dr. Richard Koch

February 12 - "Odds and Ends of Introductory Statistics" - Dr. Yoon G. Kim

February 5 - "Mapping Diagrams Take on Calculus and Complex Variables" - Dr. Martin Flashman

January 29 - "The Pythagorian Theorem and the Enduring Beauty of Mathematics" - John Martin

December 11 - "Matrix Factorizations" - Dr. Andrew Conner

December 4 - "Colorectal Cancer Screening and the Simplest Random Variables" - Dr. Joseph Carroll

November 20 - "Mathematics Videos" - Dr. Jeff Haag

November 13 - "Positive Polynomials and their Applications" - Dr. Richard Spjut

November 6 - No Colloquium

October 29 - "The Space of Polynomials from 1540 to today" - Dr. Benson Farb

October 23 - "Adventures in Plasma Physics" - Dr. Kenneth Owens, Tim Lauck

October 16 - "Why does Calculus Matter?" - Dr. Adamou Fodé Madé

October 9 - "Partitions are Everywhere!" - Dr. Ben Ford

September 25 - "Models of Human Locomotion" - Dr. Justus Ortega

September 18 - "Using Fubini's Principle in Counting Problems" - Dr. Dale Oliver

September 11 - "Products with Vectors" - Dr. Jeff Haag