Seminars and Colloquia by Series

"On the unification of quantum invariants of 3-manifolds" by Qi Chen

Series
Geometry Topology Seminar
Time
Friday, February 26, 2010 - 14:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 269
Speaker
Qi ChenWinston-Salem State University
For every quantum group one can define two invariants of 3-manifolds:the WRT invariant and the Hennings invariant. We will show that theseinvariants are equivalentfor quantum sl_2 when restricted to the rational homology 3-spheres.This relation can be used to solve the integrality problem of the WRT invariant.We will also show that the Hennings invariant produces integral TQFTsin a more natural way than the WRT invariant.

Stochastic dynamics for the population of 1-cell species (the mathematical model of plankton)

Series
Stochastics Seminar
Time
Thursday, February 25, 2010 - 15:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 269
Speaker
Stanislav MolchanovUNC Charlotte
The talk will present several limit theorems for the supercritical colony of the particles with masses. Reaction-diffusion equations responsible for the spatial distribution of the species contain the usual random death, birth and migration processes. The evolution of the mass of the individual particle includes (together with the diffusion) the mitosis: the splitting of the mass between the two offspring. The last process leads to the new effects. The limit theorems give the detailed picture of the space –mass distribution of the particles in the bulk of the moving front of the population.

Club Math - Mathematics of the Lottery

Series
Other Talks
Time
Wednesday, February 24, 2010 - 16:30 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 269
Speaker
Skip GaribaldiDepartment of Mathematics and Computer Science
Dr. Skip Garibaldi, Emory University's Winship Distinguished Professor, will make a presentation on Mathematics of the Lottery. He will discuss his expository article: "Finding good bets in the lottery, and why you shouldn't take them" recently published in the American Mathematical Monthly, Volume 117 (2010) 3-26.

Hardy Inequalities for Fractional Integrals on Convex Domains

Series
Analysis Seminar
Time
Wednesday, February 24, 2010 - 14:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 269
Speaker
Craig SloaneGeorgia Tech
We prove a sharp Hardy inequality for fractional integrals for functions that are supported in a convex domain. The constant is the same as the one for the half-space and hence our result settles a recent conjecture of Bogdan and Dyda. Further, the Hardy term in this inequality is stronger than the one in the classical case. The result can be extended as well to more general domains

Markov Chain Mixing with Applications

Series
Research Horizons Seminar
Time
Tuesday, February 23, 2010 - 12:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 255
Speaker
Prasad TetaliProfessor, School of Mathematics and School of Computer Science

Please Note: Hosted by: Huy Huynh and Yao Li

Sampling from and approximately counting the size of a large set of combinatorial structures has contributed to a renaissance in research in finite Markov chains in the last two decades. Applications are wide-ranging from sophisticated card shuffles, deciphering simple substitution ciphers (of prison inmates in the California state prison), estimating the volume of a high-dimensional convex body, and to understanding the speed of Gibbs sampling heuristics in statistical physics. More recent applications include rigorous estimates on J.M. Pollard's (1979) classical Rho and Kangaroo algorithms for the discrete logarithm problem in finite cyclic groups. The lecture will be a brief (mostly self-contained) introduction to the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methodology and applications, and will include some open problems.

Nonnegative Matrix Factorization: Fast Active-set type Algorithms and Comparisons

Series
Applied and Computational Mathematics Seminar
Time
Monday, February 22, 2010 - 13:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 255
Speaker
Heasoon Park CSE, Georgia Institute of Technology
Nonnegative Matrix Factorization (NMF) has attracted much attention during the past decade as a dimension reduction method in machine learning and data analysis. NMF provides a lower rank approximation of a nonnegative high dimensional matrix by factors whose elements are also nonnegative. Numerous success stories were reported in application areas including text clustering, computer vision, and cancer class discovery. In this talk, we present novel algorithms for NMF and NTF (nonnegative tensor factorization) based on the alternating non-negativity constrained least squares (ANLS) framework. Our new algorithm for NMF is built upon the block principal pivoting method for the non-negativity constrained least squares problem that overcomes some limitations of the classical active set method. The proposed NMF algorithm can naturally be extended to obtain highly efficient NTF algorithm for PARAFAC (PARAllel FACtor) model. Our algorithms inherit the convergence theory of the ANLS framework and can easily be extended to other NMF formulations such as sparse NMF and NTF with L1 norm constraints. Comparisons of algorithms using various data sets show that the proposed new algorithms outperform existing ones in computational speed as well as the solution quality. This is a joint work with Jingu Kim and Krishnakumar Balabusramanian.

Two weight Inequality for Hilbert transform

Series
Analysis Working Seminar
Time
Monday, February 22, 2010 - 13:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 269
Speaker
Michael LaceyGeorgia Tech
We will start a discussion of arXiv:1001.4043, which characterizes the two weight inequality for the Hilbert transform, including the statement of the theorem, and some examples of how this question arises. Joint work with Ignacio Uriate-Tuero, and Eric Sawyer.

Georgia Scientific Computing Symposium

Series
Other Talks
Time
Saturday, February 20, 2010 - 09:00 for 8 hours (full day)
Location
Skiles 249
Speaker
Georgia Scientific Computing SymposiumSchool of Mathematics, Georgia Tech
The purpose of the Georgia Scientific Computing Symposium (GSC 2010) is to provide an opportunity for professors, postdocs and graduate students in the Atlanta area to meet in an informal setting, to exchange ideas, and to highlight local scientific computing research. The one-day symposium is open to the whole research community. The event is free but registration is required.

Harris' ergodic theorem for Markov chains revisited

Series
Probability Working Seminar
Time
Friday, February 19, 2010 - 15:00 for 1.5 hours (actually 80 minutes)
Location
Skiles 169
Speaker
Tobias HurthGeorgia Tech
In my talk, I will present the main results of a recent article by Martin Hairer and Jonathan Mattingly on an ergodic theorem for Markov chains. I will consider Markov chains evolving in discrete time on an abstract, possibly uncountable, state space. Under certain regularity assumptions on the chain's transition kernel, such as the existence of a Foster-Lyapunov function with small level sets (what exactly is meant by that will be thoroughly explained in the talk), one can establish the existence and uniqueness of a stationary distribution. I will focus on a new proof technique for that theorem which relies on a family of metrics on the set of probability measures living on the state space. The main result of my talk will be a strict contraction estimate involving these metrics.

Introduction to the AJ Conjecture

Series
Geometry Topology Working Seminar
Time
Friday, February 19, 2010 - 14:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 269
Speaker
Anh TranGeorgia Tech

Please Note: This is part 1 of a two part talk. The second part will continue next week.

I will introduce the AJ conjecture (by Garoufalidis) which relates the A-polynomial and the colored Jones polynomial of a knot in the 3-sphere. Then I will verify it for the trefoil and the figure 8 knots (due to Garoufalidis) and torus knots (due to Hikami) by explicit calculations.

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