Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

A classic theorem of Mader gives the extremal functions for graphs that do not contain the complete graph on p vertices as a minor for p up to 7. Motivated by the study of linklessly embeddable graphs, we present some results on the extremal functions of apex graphs with respect to the number of triangles, and on triangle-free graphs with excluded minors. Joint work with Robin Thomas.

The goal of this lecture is to explain and motivate the connection between Aubry-Mather theory (Dynamical Systems), and viscosity solutions of the Hamilton-Jacobi equation (PDE).This connection is the content of weak KAM Theory.The talk should be accessible to the “generic” mathematician. No a priori knowledge of any of the two subjects is assumed.The set-up of this theory is classical mechanical systems, in its Lagrangian formulation to take advantage of the action principle. This is the natural setting for Celestial Mechanics. Today it is also the setting for motions of satellites in the solar system.Hamilton found a reformulation of Lagrangian mechanics in terms of position and momentum instead of position and speed. In this formulation appears the Hamilton-Jacobi equation. Although this is a partial differential equation, its solutions allow to find solutions of the Hamiltonian (or Lagrangian) systems which are, in fact, governed by an ordinary differential equation.KAM (Kolmogorov-Arnold-Moser) theorem addressed at its beginning (Kolomogorov) the problem of stability of the solar system. It came as a surprise, since Poincare ́’s earlier work pointed to instability. In fact, some initial conditions lead to instability (Poincare ́) and some others lead to stability(Kolomogorov).Aubry-Mather theory finds some more substantial stable motion that survives outside the region where KAM theorem applies.The KAM theorem also provides global differentiable solutions to the Hamilton-Jacobi equation.It is known that the Hamilton-Jacobi equation usually does not have smooth global solutions. Lions & Crandall developed a theory of weak solutions of the Hamilton-Jacobi equation.Weak KAM theory explains how the Aubry-Mather sets can be obtained from the points where weak solutions of the Hamilton-Jacobi equation are differentiable.

For the sake of puzzle-lovers worldwide, IBM Research offers a monthly mathematical challenge known as Ponder This. Every month, a new challenge is posted together with the solution for the previous month's riddle. Prof. Oded Margalit has served as the Ponder This puzzlemaster for the last decade. In this talk, he’ll survey some of most interesting riddles posted over the years, and tell some anecdotes about various challenges and regular solvers, such as one person who sent in his solution from an intensive care unit. Several challenges have led to conference and journal papers, such as a PRL paper born from a riddle on random walks, and an ITA 2014 paper on a water hose model (using quantum entanglement to break location-based encryption). Other monthly challenges have riffed on games such as 2048, Kakuro, an infinite chess game, the probability of backgammon ending with a double, Fischer Random Chess, and more. Other challenges have been more purely mathematic, focusing on minimal hash functions, combinatorial test design, or finding a natural number n such that round ((1+2 cos(20))^n) is divisible by 10^9. The talk will present a still-open question about a permutation-firing cannon. The talk will be self contained.

Given data and a statistical model, the maximum likelihood estimate is the point of the statistical model that maximizes the probability of observing the data. In this talk, I will address three different approaches to maximum likelihood estimation using algebraic methods. These three approaches use boundary stratification of the statistical model, numerical algebraic geometry and the EM fixed point ideal. This talk is based on joint work with Allman, Cervantes, Evans, Hoşten, Kosta, Lemke, Rhodes, Robeva, Sturmfels, and Zwiernik.