Open Neighborhood Seminar
Harvard University Math Department
Welcome to Open Neighborhood Seminar! ONS is a general-audience colloquium series for all members of the Harvard math community, including undergraduates at any level. It meets every other Wednesday at 4:30pm in SC507 for an hour-long talk, followed by snacks and a social hour with the speaker. (We alternate with Math Table.) You can subscribe to our mailing list here.
Next talk: October 12
- Speaker: Lisa Sauermann (MIT)
- Title: On the cap-set problem and the slice rank polynomial method
- Abstract: In 2016, Ellenberg and Gijswijt made a breakthrough on the famous cap-set problem, which asks about the maximum size of a subset of (F_3)^n not containing a three-term arithmetic progression. They proved that any such set has size at most 2.756^n. Their proof was later reformulated by Tao, introducing what is now called the slice rank polynomial method. This talk will explain Tao's proof of the Ellenberg-Gijswijt bound for the cap-set problem, and discuss some related problems.
Past and future talks
August 31 (MT/ONS Opener)
- Speaker: Mike Hopkins (Harvard)
- Title: Sailing, calculus and conformal maps
- Abstract: In the mid 1500s the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator introduced a revolutionary idea into the construction of maps used for navigation. This talk will cover some of the wonderful mathematics in Mercator's idea, and the surprising story of the formula for the integral of the secant.
September 14
- Speaker: Hugh Woodin (Harvard)
- Title: Incompleteness and infinity
- Abstract: A natural speculation is that incompleteness is simply a by-product of infinity. Perhaps one can avoid incompleteness by simply restricting our mathematical scope to the finite. Do we lose anything in this move? The answer I shall argue, is both yes and no. Along the way I will discuss an entirely new approach to the Godel Incompleteness Theorems which has emerged over the last 15 years. I will also introduce some very large finite numbers which arise naturally from finite combinatorics, and indicate how by invoking these large finite numbers, any number theoretic problem of modern interest can be converted to a finitistic statement. It is unclear which would be more amazing for these problems of modern interest: This conversion does not always produce an equivalent problem, or that this conversion always does.
September 28
- Speaker: John Urschel (Harvard)
- Title: From moments to matrices
- Abstract: Moments of a function give concrete information about the shape of the associated graph and have been thoroughly studied in a wide variety of fields. In this talk, we will discuss a number of classic moment problems and their connection to practical problems in numerical linear algebra.
October 12
- Speaker: Lisa Sauermann (MIT)
- Title: On the cap-set problem and the slice rank polynomial method
- Abstract: In 2016, Ellenberg and Gijswijt made a breakthrough on the famous cap-set problem, which asks about the maximum size of a subset of (F_3)^n not containing a three-term arithmetic progression. They proved that any such set has size at most 2.756^n. Their proof was later reformulated by Tao, introducing what is now called the slice rank polynomial method. This talk will explain Tao's proof of the Ellenberg-Gijswijt bound for the cap-set problem, and discuss some related problems.
October 26
- Speaker: Álvaro Lozano-Robledo (UConn)
- Title: TBA
- Abstract: TBA
November 9
- Speaker: Gage Martin (MIT and Harvard)
- Title: TBA
- Abstract: TBA
November 30
- Speaker: Valerio Toledano Laredo (Northeastern)
- Title: TBA
- Abstract: TBA
Organizers: Ana Balibanu (ana@math.harvard.edu) and Dori Bejleri (bejleri@math.harvard.edu). Please drop us an email if you're curious about the seminar!