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Number Theory Seminars

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The Number Theory Seminar is structured to include talks on a broad range of mathematical areas that are of interest to number theorists, including analytic and algebraic number theory, algebra, combinatorics, algebraic and arithmetic geometry, cryptography, representation theory, and more. Talks are given by a variety of local, national, and international speakers in number theory and related areas.

See below for upcoming seminars or access the seminar archive.


Organizers

Mary Flahive, Clayton Petsche, Thomas Schmidt and Holly Swisher

Timing

We traditionally meet every Tuesday at 10:00 a.m.


The Knave's Cosmological Theorem

Zoom

Speaker: Tamsyn Morrill

Abstract: The Look-Say sequence is a classic example of recursion. Its terms are verbalized descriptions of their predecessors --- initialized at 1 --- 11, 21, 1211, and so on. Conway demonstrated that the asymptotic growth rate of this sequence is the unique real root of a degree 71 monic polynomial. The general idea is to recast the problem in linear algebra through use of his Cosmological Theorem. Today I present a variation of this problem. A knave (of Smullyan's famed door-keeper puzzle) now controls the recursion. After working through some small examples, we will remake the Cosmological Theorem in the knave's image. Read more.


TBA

WNGR 201

Speaker: Fang-Ting Tu

Read more.


TBA

WNGR 201

Speaker: Manami Roy

Read more.