SCU Mathematics Colloquium Series Schedule

Preliminary
Winter 1999

Talks will be at 4:00 Tuesdays in O'Connor 206. There will be refreshments before all talks in O'Connor 31 starting around 3:40pm.

• Jan. 19 George Fegan, San Jose State University

  Title: "I mean what I say and I say what I mean."

  This talk will center around Sums of a Random Number of Random Variables and Mixtures of Probability Distributions. The introduction will consist of a review of the vagaries of naming schemes from the literature. Examples from Repeat-Priority queues, compound Poisson distributions, and negative binomial distributions will be presented. Much of the material will be similar to the subject matter covered in our class on Queueing Systems and therefore should be accessible to undergraduate students. Hopefully there will even be a fresh approach to an old problem.

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• Jan. 26 Helen Moore, Bowdoin College, visiting at Stanford University.

  Title: Fun with Bubbles

  I will give an elementary introduction to the beautiful mathematical models of soap films, including a hands-on demonstration. It would be useful to know some calculus. (Translation: students will enjoy this talk!) My goal is to teach you a bit of the mathematics involved in the field of minimal surfaces. By the end of the talk I will be able to explain some current research in this field.

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• As part of the Colloquium Series, job applicants will be presenting talks during the remainder of the quarter. The dates will be posted when they are determined. Some of these presentations may not be on Tuesday, but will normally be at 4:00pm.

  Candidates will be presenting talks on the following dates: Tuesday, February 9; Tuesday, February 16; Friday, February 26 (revised date); Tuesday, March 2; Thursday, March 4; Monday, March 8.

  Anyone wishing further information about any of these talks should contact the coordinator of the Colloquium Series, Prof. Dan Ostrov, dostrov@scu.edu

The list of talks from previous quarters are available via this archive link.

Last Updated: 11 February 1999
Maintainer: dsmolarski@scu.edu