Proposals

Below are some proposals for talks from the past (and current). By clicking on the ID number, more details are shown. By default, these are sorted chronologically (recent first) and by then by last name. The data can be sorted by alternate means by using the links at the top right, each allowing ascending or descending orders.

Displaying 461-471 of 471 results.
ID: 53
Year: 2004
Name: Stephen Walk
Institution: St. Cloud State University
Subject area(s):
Title of Talk: Avoiding Paradoxes in Joker Poker

Abstract: If we add a Joker to an ordinary deck of cards, we'll find that the three-of-a-kind hands are more prevalent than the two-pair hands. (By convention, the Joker is always interpreted to make the hand's rank as high as possible.) Since the two-pair hands are rarer, by all rights they should outrank the threes-of-a-kind. But if the ranking is redone so that two-pair hands rank higher, then some of the Joker hands have to be interpreted as two-pair hands instead of threes-of-a-kind, and as a result the two-pair hands are again more prevalent than threes-of-a-kind. There is simply no consistent way to rank the poker hands in this Joker deck. It's enough to make Bret Maverick spin in his grave. \par What if we don't confine ourselves to the ordinary deck? Is it possible to find a deck that avoids paradoxes like the one above? Yes! Is it \emph{easy} to avoid paradoxes? Sure---if the deck is big enough. This talk will include the results of an investigation into this situation as well as a few details about the methodology. Only decks of size smaller than one million are considered; bigger decks become somewhat difficult to shuffle.
ID: 52
Year: 2004
Name: Ruth Berger
Institution: Luther College
Subject area(s): algebra
Title of Talk: Fun & Games with Permutation groups

Abstract: This talk will give an introduction to the
ID: 50
Year: 2004
Name: Rick Spellerberg
Institution: Simpson College
Subject area(s): Game Theory
Title of Talk: The Sequence Prediction Game

Abstract: This talk will center on a review of a paper that appeared in the International Journal of Game Theory authored by David Blackwell who is a member of the statistics department at the University of California at Berkeley. In his paper, Blackwell considered the problem of predicting the short-term future behavior of a sequence, after observing it as long as you please, so as to achieve a specified reliability against all possible sequences. In particular, predicting when in a sequence of 0
ID: 49
Year: 2004
Name: Joel Haack
Institution: University of Northern Iowa
Subject area(s): History of Mathematics, number theory
Title of Talk: How did Leonardo Pisano find three rational squares that differ by 5?

Abstract: This problem, which has often seemed intractable to students in a history of mathematics class, can in fact be approached in an understandable fashion, following Leonardo's own development in the Liber Quadratorum.
ID: 48
Year: 2004
Name: Christopher French
Institution: Grinnell College
Subject area(s): Number Theory
Title of Talk: Fifth roots of Fibonacci Fractions

Abstract: The quotients of consecutive Fibonacci numbers converge to the golden ratio. In fact, the continued fraction expansion for such ratios consists of the nth truncation of the continued fraction expansion for the golden ratio. In a similar way, if F_n denotes the nth Fibonacci number, then the kth root of F_{n+k}/F_n converges to the golden ratio, and one can investigate the continued fraction expansion for these roots. Something rather remarkable happens when k=5.
ID: 47
Year: 2004
Name: Ronald Smith
Institution: Graceland College
Subject area(s): Algorithms
Title of Talk: The distribution of digits in consecutive integers

Abstract: The distribution of digits problem asks for the frequency of each digit (0
ID: 46
Year: 2004
Name: Charles Ashbacher
Institution: Mt. Mercy College
Subject area(s): Number theory
Title of Talk: Not All Numbers Are Beautiful

Abstract: In his forthcoming book,
ID: 40
Year: 2004
Name: a.m. fink
Institution:
Subject area(s):
Title of Talk: The effect of philosophy on curriculum

Abstract: I wrote a history of the Iowa State Mathematics Department and discovered that the curriculum offered was very dependent on outside influences and the philosophy of eductation of the those outside influences.
ID: 31
Year: 2004
Name: Frank Farris
Institution: Santa Clara University and Editor of Mathematics Magazine
Subject area(s): Geometry
Title of Talk: Forbidden Symmetry: Relaxing the Crystallographic Restriction

Abstract: If you look at enough swatches of wallpaper, you will see centers of 2-fold, 3-fold, 4-fold, and 6-fold rotation. Why not 5-fold centers? They cannot occur, according to the Crystallographic Restriction, a fundamental result about wallpaper patterns, which are defined to be invariant under two linearly independent translations. Even so, we offer convincing pictures that appear to show wallpapers with 5-fold symmetry. The talk is intended to be accessible to students who know something about level curves in the plane and linear algebra.
ID: 30
Year: 2004
Name: Frank Farris
Institution: Santa Clara University and Editor of Mathematics Magazine
Subject area(s): Geometry
Title of Talk: The Edge of the Universe--Hyperbolic Wallpaper

Abstract: The universe couldn't have an edge, because if it did, you could go there, put your hand through and find more of the universe on the other side, right? This reasoning breaks down if you and your measuring devices shrink as you approach the edge, making it infinitely far away. We show a mathematical model of such a universe, called the Poincare Upper Halfplane, and study some of its features. The classical topic of circle inversion plays a prominent role. Physics suggests that this turns out to be a cold and lonely place, but we make beautiful wallpaper for the inhabitants.
ID: 26
Year: 2004
Name: Ryan Martin
Institution: Iowa State University
Subject area(s): Combinatorics, Graph Theory
Title of Talk: Six degrees of graph theory: Kevin Bacon, Paul Erdos, William McKinley and me

Abstract: Popularized by the Kevin Bacon game, the Small World problem is a question of measuring distance between members of a given set, upon which is a binary symmetric relationship. In the game, the set is the set of actors and two actors are linked if they appeared in the same movie. The distance between two actors is the fewest number of links to get from one to the other. In this talk, we discuss the game and a random graph model that gives an answer to a Small World-type question.