Each year the Department of Mathematical Sciences holds a special lecture in honor of Professor Richard C. DiPrima, who was a professor in the Math Sciences Department and started as chair of the department in 1972.
Galois Groups in Enumerative Geometry
In 1870 Jordan explained how Galois theory can be applied to problems from enumerative geometry, with the group encoding intrinsic structure of the problem. Earlier Hermite showed the equivalence of Galois groups with geometric monodromy groups, and in 1979 Harris initiated the modern study of Galois groups of enumerative problems. He posited that a Galois group should be `as large as possible' in that it will be the largest group preserving internal symmetry in the geometric problem.
A Few Short Stories About Mathematics and Sports
In most professional sports, every physical attribute of an athlete that can be measured is tracked and recorded. There exists an abundance of (relatively) high quality data — in football, basketball, baseball, cricket, etc. — which makes sports an ideal testing ground for new analyses and algorithms. In this talk I will describe a few studies that lie at the intersection of sports and data.