Mathematics Colloquium
A weekly series of talks given by Humboldt Mathematics faculty and guest speakers.
Unless indicated otherwise, all talks are held Thursdays at 4:00pm in BSS 166.
If you would like to recieve emails for any of these events, please email math@humboldt.edu.
2024-2025
December 5 - Camera Modeling with QR Decompositions (part 2) - Dr. Kenneth Owens (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics)
November 21 - Camera Modeling with QR Decompositions - Dr. Kenneth Owens (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics)
November 14 - Computing and Data Science Education with Human Contexts - Dr. Lisa Yan (UC Berkeley, Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences)
November 7 - From Here to Infinity: Lemniscates and Elliptic Integrals - Dr. Walden Freedman (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics)
October 31 - AI in Math Education: Teaching and Learning with AI - Carlos A. Lopez Gonzalez (Tuto)
October 24 - Disc Game Dynamics: A Latent Paradigm for Learning in Zero-Sum Games - Dr. Alexander Strang (UC Berkeley, Statistics and Data Science)
October 17 - Getting to Know Your Limits: the Epsilon-Delta Definition - Dr. Kenneth Owens (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics)
October 10 - Innovations in Data Science and Statistics at a California Community College - Dr. Solomon Russell (El Camino College, Computer Science)
October 3 - Zeros of a family of complex-valued harmonic polynomials - Dr. Michael Dorff (Brigham Young University, Mathematics)
September 26 - Improving forecasts of the ecological impacts of climate change - Jason McLachlan (University of Notre Dame, Biological Sciences)
September 19 - Growing with AI: Lessons Learned from Competing in 75 International Data Science Competitions - Dr. Chris Deotte (Senior Data Scientist Nvidia & Quadruple Kaggle Grandmaster)
September 12 - Can AI Grade Your Homework? - Max Bohun, Aman Garg and Keith Sollers (GradeWiz and Cornell University)
September 5 - If Attention is all we need, is Linear Regression mostly all we need? - Dr. Rosanna Overholser (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics)
August 29 - GEO AI Food Security: Remote Sensing of Central Valley Crop Water Stress - Dr. Kamila Dilmurat (UC Merced)
2023-2024
April 25 - Modeling Paradigms for Immune Cell Activity - Dr. Kamila Larripa, Amanda Case, Emmanuel Mezzulo, Abigail Penland & Cheyenne Ty (Cal Poly Humboldt Mathematics and Computer Science)
April 18 - Solving Conservation Puzzles with Integrated Community Models - Dr. Elise Zipkin (Red Cedar Distinguished Associate Professor, Michigan State University)
April 11 - Never Underestimate a Theorem That Counts Something! - Dr. Tyler J. Evans (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics)
April 4 - An Aspirational Approach to the Mathematical Preparation of Teachers - Dr. Beth Burroughs (Montana State University, Mathematical Sciences)
March 28 - Chaos in the Wild: Unveiling Nature's Dynamic Patterns - Dr. Bethany Johnson (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics)
March 21 - Module Categories: Why We Care, and How to Find Them - Caleb Hill (University of New Hampshire, Mathematics & Statistics (Ph.D. Candidate))
March 7 - How to Accidentally Program a Supercomputer? - Dr. Ken Owens (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics)
February 29 - Shallow- and Deep-Water Ocean Waves: Deconstructing the Dispersion Relation - Dr. Tamara Beitzel Barriquand (Cal Poly Humboldt, Oceanography and Physics & Astronomy)
February 22 - A World from a Sheet of Paper (Video from the Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures) - Dr. Tadashi Tokieda (Stanford, Mathematics)
February 15 - Navajo Math Circles - A film by George Paul Csicsery
February 8 - Forgetful Observations on Sudoku Solutions and the Phistomefel Ring - Dr. Joe Carroll (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics)
November 30 - Language as a Softening Liquid - Dr. Peter Overholser (Schatz Energy Research Center)
November 16 - Transformations and Symmetry - Dr. Brandon Ashley (Southern Oregon University, Mathematics)
November 9 - Secrets of the SurfaceThe Mathematical Vision of Maryam Mirzakhani - A film by George Csicsery
November 2 - What is Data Science? What Does a Data Scientist Do? - Dr. Rosanna Overholser (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics)
October 27 (Friday) - Clocks, Parking Garages, and the Solvability of the Quintic: A Friendly Introduction to Monodromy - Dr. Edray Goins (Pomona College, Mathematics)
October 19 - The Microscopic World of Piecewise Isometries - Dr. Arek Goetz (San Francisco State University, Mathematics)
October 16 (Monday) - Online Trend Estimation and Detection of Trend Deviations in Sub-sewershed Time Series of SARS-CoV-2 RNA Measured in Wastewater - Dr. Julia Schedler (Rice University, Statistics)
October 12 - Integer Cokernels and Fragmented Tilings - Dr. Alex McDonough (UC Davis, Mathematics)
October 5 - No colloquium lecture
September 28 - Encryption via Permutations and Breaking the Enigma Machine - Dr. Tyler Evans (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics)
September 21 - Hyperbolic Tessellations and the Art of M.C. Escher - Dr. Martha Byrne (Sonoma State University, Mathematics and Statistics)
September 14 - The Intersection of Mathematics and Art Cognitions - The Great Wave off Kanagawa and The Fibonacci Spiral - Mr. Tuto Lopez Gonzalez (San Francisco State University, Mathematics)
September 7 - The Mysterious Linking of the Borromean Rings Explained: A Geometric Picture of Milnor’s Link Invariants - Dr. Anna Cepek (University of Oregon, Mathematics)
August 31 - A Cautionary Tale in Applied Statistics - Dr. John G Williams (Environmental Scientist, retired, and veteran of the Central Valley water wars)
2022-2023
April 27 - How to Build and Program a Supercomputer - Dr. Ken Owens and Charlin Duff (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics)
April 20 - From the Heavens to the Earth: The Mercurial Tale of Spherical Trigonometry - Dr. Glen Van Brummelen (Trinity Western University, Dean of the Faculty of Natural and Applied Sciences)
April 13 - A New Kind of Music - Emma Modrick (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics and Oceanography)
April 6 - The Poincare Disk and the Hyperquilt: Easing into models of the hyperbolic plane - Dr. Carol Keig (Sonoma State, Mathematics and Statistics)
March 30 - The Geometry of Numbers - Dr. Dibyajyoti Deb (Oregon Institute of Technology, Mathematics)
March 23 - The Paradoxes of the Game Penney Ante - Philip Farmer
March 9 - Surprising Connections in Number Theory - Dr. Daniel Martin (UC Davis, Mathematics) [Cancelled]
March 2 - Informing students about Cal-Bridge and REUs - Dr. Chris Dugaw (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics)
February 23 - Introduction to Python: Python vs. R - Dr. Yoon Kim (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics)
February 16 - Towards Open Science Using GitHub and R Markdown - Mr. Judson Fisher (Cal Poly Humboldt, Fisheries, Forestry Watershed & Wildland Sciences Graduate Student)
February 9 - Darts-Visualizing Probability: Simulations, Graphs & Mapping Diagrams - Dr. Martin Flashman (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics (Emeritus))
February 2 - Mathematical Trinities - Mystery & Beauty of Mathematics - Dr. Andrew Conner (St. Mary’s College of California, Mathematics & Computer Science)
December 1 - SoME1 - Winners - Dr. Jeff Haag (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics)
November 24 - No colloquium lecture (fall break)
November 17 - No colloquium lecture
November 10 - Calculus Gems: Brief Lives and Memorable Mathematics - Dr. Jeff Haag (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics)
November 3 - Fourier Series: The Beauty of Circular Motion, part II - Dr. Walden Freedman (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics)
October 27 - A Deep Dive into (the best show ever) Futurama - Dr. Chris Harmon (Cal Poly Humboldt, Chemistry)
October 20 - No colloquium lecture
Friday, October 14 - "On the (t, r) Broadcast Domination Number of Graphs" - Dr. Pamela E. Harris (University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Mathematics)
October 6 - "Binary Logistic Regression and the Maximum Likelihood Estimator" - Dr. Joseph Carrol (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics)
September 29 - "Pascal’s Mystic Hexagon" - Dr. Peter Goetz (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics)
September 22 - "An Introduction to Model Selection and Causal Diagrams" - Dr. Rosanna Overholser (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics)
September 15 - "A Brief Introduction to Check Digits" - Dr. Tyler Evans (Cal Poly Humboldt, Mathematics)
September 8 - "W, H, A, T, S, _, N, E, X, ..." - Dr. Peter Overholser (Oregon Institute of Technology, Mathematics)
September 1 - "Wave-driven Changes in Beach Sand Levels" - Dr. Bonnie Ludka (Cal Poly Humboldt, Environmental Resource Engineering and Mathematics)
2021-2022
April 7 - "A Geometer’s view of Statistical Inference and Machine learning" - Dr. Jesús De Loera
March 3 - "Stability Analysis with Fourier Transforms" - Dr. Ken Owens
February 24 - "Taming tensors" - Dr. Peter Brooksbank
February 17 - "An Invitation to Invariant Theory" - Dr. Frank Moore
February 10 - "Romancing the Triples" - John Martin
December 9 - "What are we actually modeling? Movement, assumptions, and imperfect detection complicate estimates of animal abundance." - Dr. Frank Fogarty
November 4 - "The (possible) shapes of space: 3-dimensional topology and geometrization" - Dr. Stephen Trettel
October 28 - "Teaching Undergraduate Data Science at UC Berkeley with Jupyter notebooks: pathways for curricular innovation" - Dr. Eric Van Dusen
October 21 - "Opportunities to Teach Empathetic Critical Thinking through Modeling" - Prof. Beth Burroughs
October 14 - "Secret Code Girls of World War II" - Liza Mundy
October 7 - "Fourier Series: The Beauty of Circular Motion" - Dr. Walden Freedman
September 23 - "Introduction to BA 422: Financial Data Analytics and Econometrics" - Dr. Ramesh Adhikari
September 16 - "Michael's Card Shuffling Problem: An Inductive Inquiry into Derangements" - Dr. Joe Carroll
September 9 - " Survival Analysis, Mixture Distributions, and Individual Heterogenity" - Dr. Chris Dugaw
2020-2021
April 29 - " Real Partners for Real Analysis: An Academic Support Program for Students" - Drs. Abigail Higgins and Sayonita Ghosh Hajra
April 22 - "A Counting problem for Standard Young Tableaux with a given shape and a major index" - Dr. Lipika Deka
April 15 - "A Virtual Summer at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory" - Dr. Jessica De Silva
April 8 - "Humanizing Online STEM Courses" - Dr. Sarah Williams
April 1 - "Primes, sieves and pentiums: A tale from the 90's" - Dr. Kevin McGown
March 25 - "A Freshmen Level Computational Linear Algebra Course" - Dr. Laura Chowdury
March 4 - "Learning Through the Triad: Cryptography, Theory, and Programming" - Dr. Jeff Meyer
January 21 - "A Mathematical and Historical Treatment of Timekeeping" - Dr. Chris Dugaw
January 28 - "A conversation about teaching with two Humboldt Math Education alumni"
2019-2020
March 12 - "Advances in Spatially Balanced Sampling: The HIP and BAS Methods" - Dr. Trent McDonald
March 5 - "Using Pre-College Student Attitudes and Demographics to Predict STEM Career Interest" - Alana Unfried
February 27 - "A Brief Encounter with the Distributional Kind" - Ellery Ames
February 13 - "The Spiritual Side of Mathematics" - John Martin
February 6 - "Irrational and Transcendental Numbers" - Kevin McGown
December 19 - "Catching Internal Waves in the Ocean: The Mathematics of Internal Waves and Turbulence in the Ocean" - Tamara Barraquand
November 14 - "Two Videos by 3Blue1Brown"
November 7 - "Classifiers for Predicting Undergraduate Computer Science Performance" - Sherrene Bogle
October 31 - "Tricks & Treats" - Brad Ballinger
October 24 - "Public Key Cryptography" - Adamou Fode Made
October 17 - "Bertrand's Paradox (i) from R simulation and (ii) from the Bayesian Perspective" - Yoon Kim
October 3 - "Restricted Patterns of the Past, Present, and Future" - Zvezdelina Stankova
September 26 - "False Position" - Walden Freedman
September 19 - "Circles in Polygons" - Tyler Evans
September 12 - "What's Wrong with Statistical Significance Tests: An Example from Environmental Flow Assessment" - John Williams
September 5 - "Linear Algebra and Mapping Diagrams: Old and New Visualizations with GeoGebra" - Martin Flashman
2018-2019
May 2 - "Introduction to the geometric product and the geometric algebras G2 and G3" - Tim Lauck
April 25 - "Mathematical Art from Complex Analysis" - Frank A. Farris
April 18 - "Principal Component Analysis- An Explanation and an Application" - Michael Wilson & Peter Oliver
April 11 - "Relevant Advances and Applications of Occupancy Models" - Larissa Bailey
April 4 - "Points, Polytopes, and Polynomials" - Katharina Jochemko
March 28 - "An Interfering Paths Approach to Understanding Quantum Mechanics" - Ken Owens
March 7 - "There are Infinitely Many Universes on My Beach Ball! Surprising Facts, Useful Tools, and New Results in Topology" - Leanne Merrill
February 28 - "Empirical Likelihood for Detecting Changes in Time Series Models" - Ramadha Piyadi Gamage
February 21 - "Applied Approaches to Missing Data"
February 14 - "A Comparison of Statistical Models with Longitudinal Data: An Application to Outpatient Clinical Treatment for Problem Drinkers" - Judith Canner
January 31 - "Musings on Multiplicative Functions" - Tyler Evans
November 15 - Must See Math Videos hosted by Jeff Haag
November 8 - "From Permutations to Slopes: A Suprising Example of Generating Functions" - Warren Staley
October 25 - "Equations over Finite Groups and a new Perspective on 'Solvability'" - Alon Amit
October 18 - "Using in situ meansurements and numerical models to investigate subsurface coastal ocean transport" - Jacob S. Partida
October 11 - "Perplex vs. Complex" - Walden Freedman
October 4 - "Heat and Mass Transfer in Soil with Application to Seasonal Renewable Energy Storage and Enviornmental Remediation" - Ali Moradi Gharehtapeh
September 27 - "Radioactive Pi" - Chris Dugaw
September 20 - "Investigation of Surfaces using the Diffuse Reflectance Infrared Fourier Transform Spectroscopy Technique" - Chris Harmon
September 13 - "How Many Ways can you solve a Quadratic Euation Visually? From the Greeks to 21st Century Technology" - Martin Flashman
September 6 - "A Brief Introduction to Elliptic Curves" - Peter Goetz
2017-2018
May 2 - "The Many Faces of Dispersive Equations" - Gigliola Staffilani
April 26 - "An Introduction to the Change Point Problem and Applications to Stock Market Data" - Abeer Hasan
April 19 - "Hyperoperation Absurdity" - Brian Stonelake
April 12 - Student Results of the Mathematical Contest in Modeling
April 5 - An Introduction to Bayesian Statistics - Edward Roualdes
March 29 - Slide Rules - Ken Yanosko
March 22 - Cold Fusion/LENR Update - Robin Carter
March 8 - Applications of Quantile Regression in Ecology - Barry Noon
February 22 - Mathematical Games and Puzzles, Part 2 - Brad Ballinger
February 15 - "Building Your Career in the Exciting World of Data Science - Jim Hetrick and Rick Hutley
February 8 - "Surreal Numbers and Combinatorial Games" - Andrew Conner
February 1 - Mathematical Games and Puzzles - Brad Ballinger
January 25 - Introductory LaTeX Workshop - Brad Ballinger
November 30 - "Bézout's Theorem: A Tale of Two Curves" - Pete Goetz
November 16 - Mathematics Videos
November 9 - "PIC Math Course: Preparing to Enter Non-Teaching Careers" - Bori Mazzag
November 2 - "Solar Energy Soiling: The Problem, Experiments, and Model Development" - Liza Boyle
October 26 - "Foolhardy Forays into Generalizations of the Collatz Conjecture" - Erik Knutsen
October 19 - Video Conference with an Humboldt Graduate - Valerie Yellam - PDF
October 12 - "Three-term Arithmetic Progressions" - Hans Parshall, The Ohio State University
October 5 - "The Joy of Mathematical Games" - Video by Arthur Benjamin
September 28 - "Conics in Euclidean, Projective, and Hyperbolic Planes" - Dale Oliver
September 21 - "Mathematical Puzzle Party"
September 12 - "Can't you just feel the Moonshine?" - Ken Ono
September 7 - "Quadratic Residues and Primative Roots" - Kevin McGown
August 24 - "Solving Polynomial Equations: Visualization from Linear to Cubic, from Rational to Complex Numbers" - Martin Flashman
2016-2017
April 27 - "The Maxwell-Wiechert Model of Viscoelasticity" - Joseph Carroll
April 20 - "Dividing a Square into Triangles: Combinatorial Topology meets the 2-adic Absolute Value" - Peter Goetz
Apr 13 - "The Jewel in the Crown: Quadratic Reciprocity" - Rick Luttmann
Apr 6 - "64=65? Lewis Carroll: Puzzling Mathematician & Mathematical Puzzler" - Stuart Moskowitz
Mar 30 - "Alumna Interview: Profile of a Non-Academic Career Path in Mathematics" - Jennifer Sorkin (via Skype)
Mar 23 - "Spatial Capture-Recapture: Integrating Observations and Ecological Theory" - Andy Royle
Mar 9 - "Understanding Quasars: The Study of Galaxies far, far away...." - Paola Rodrigues Hidalgo
Mar 2 - "Vector-Valued Modular Forms and the Bounded Denominator Conjecture" - Christopher Marks
Feb 23 - "The Electoral College vs. The Popular Vote or Balinski and Young vs. Kenneth Arrow" - Charlie Biles
Feb 16 - "Summing it Up" - A Video presentation of a talk given at Google by Avner Ash and Robert Gross on August 23, 2016
Feb 9 - "Feel the Bern - The Bernoulli Numbers" - Jeff Haag
Feb 2 - "Combinatorial Fixed Point Theorems" - Francis Su
Jan 26 - "Connections Beyond the Margins of the Grid" - Peter Alstone
Dec 1 - "intrinsic Properties of Graphs Embedded in R3" - Erica Flapan
Nov. 17 - "Counting from Infinity: Yitang Zhang and the Twin Prime Conjecture" - film by George Csicery, ZALA films, MSRI
Nov. 10 - "A Mathematician's View on Quantum Mechanics" - Kenneth Owens
Nov. 3 - "Mathematical Modeling in Ecology" - Christopher Dugaw
Oct. 27 - "Mathematical Origami: Forcing Sets for Miura Folding Patterns" - Brad Ballinger
Oct. 20 - "Teaching and Learning Mathematics with a Growth Mindset" - Dale Oliver
Oct. 13 - "Modeling Carbon Nanotube Networks" - Ruth Saunders
Oct. 6 - "A Trip through the Numerical-Galaxy Zoo" - Ellery Ames
Sept. 29 - "Planning for Uncertainty: Power Planning Models for the Northwest" - Steven Simmons
Sept. 22 - "No Punt Intended" - Katharine Gray
Sept. 15 - "Statistical and Ecosystem Modeling in Support of Ecosystem Approaches to Fisheries Management" - Andre Buchheister
Sept. 8 - "A Selection from Kvant Selecta: On Removing Parentheses with D.B. Fuchs" - Tyler Evans
Sept. 1 - "Waste-to-Reuse: Novel Membrane-Based Processes for Resource and Energy Recovery" - Kerri Hickenbottom
2015-2016
Apr. 21 - "Supercomputing and Quantum Tunneling"
Apr. 14 - "The Great Math Mystery" - Nova Series
Apr. 7 - "Chaos from Simple Trigonometry" - Rick Luttman
Mar. 24 - "Tensors and Their Eigenvectors" - Bernd Sturmfels
Mar. 10 - "Proofs from the Other Book" - Ken Yanosko
Mar. 3 - "Complex Variables: Mapping Diagrams for Visualizing Complex Arithmetic and Functions Dynamically with GeoGebra" - Martin Flashman
Feb. 25 - "From the Abacus to the iPhone" - John Martin
Feb. 18 - "Little Things that Run the Savanna" - Daniel Doak
Feb. 11 - "Competition: Some Insights from Individual-based Models" - Rollie Lamberson
Feb. 4 - "Weird Means to an End: An Introduction to Functional Equations" - Walden Freedman
Jan. 28 - "Optimization inspired by biology: parameter fitting using the genetic algorithm” - Bori Mazzag
Dec. 10 - "Can Dolphins Communicate Abstract Ideas?" - Abeer Hasan
Dec. 3 - "The Math Life" - Wendy Conquest, Bob Drake & Dan Rockmore
Nov. 19 - "Synchronicity: Alternating Sums, Exclusion, and Determinants" - Jennifer J. Quinn
Nov. 12 - "Formative Fun" - Michael Butler
Nov. 5 - "N is a Number" - film hosted by Dr. Walden Freedman
Oct. 29 - "Restricted Central Extensions of Modular Witt Algebras" - Dr. Tyler Evans
Oct. 22 - No Colloquium
Oct. 15 - "The History of Congressional Apportionment Through a Mathematical Lens" - Dr. Charles Biles
Oct. 8 - "Pattern-oriented modeling for design and validation of individual-based wildlife models: the Jamaica coffee farm example" - Dr. Steve RailsbackOct. 1 - "Investigation of Surfaces Using the Diffuse Reflectance Infrared Fourier Transform Spectroscopy Technique" - Dr. Chris Harmon
Sept. 24 - "Proof the Square root of 2 is Irrational and an Introduction to Convexity" - Dr. Richard Spjut
Sept. 17 - "Positroids, 1/e², and a conjecture of Da Silva” - Dr. Federico Ardila
Sept. 8 - "Tsunami Propagation over Underwater Obstacles" - Dr. Sergei Fomin
Sept. 3 - "Let's Get Series About Calculus" - Dr. Jeff Haag
2014-2015
April 30 - "Is Mathematics Biology's Next Microscope?" - Dr. Kamila Larripa
April 23 - "Quantum Tunneling and Computation" - Dr. Kenneth Owens
April 16 - "WebWork: An Open Source Alternative" - Tim Lauck and Tim Payer
April 6 - "A Computational Mathematician Combusts" - Dr. Margot Gerritsen
March 12 - "Professors Pondering Pi" - Drs. Dale Oliver and Jeff Haag
March 5 - "A Tribute to Euler" - Dr. William Dunham (video)
February 26 - "Evidence, Errors and AIC" - Dr. Brian Dennis
February 19 - "Dirac's Belt Trick, the iPad®, and Quaternions" - Dr. Richard Koch
February 12 - "Odds and Ends of Introductory Statistics" - Dr. Yoon G. Kim
February 5 - "Mapping Diagrams Take on Calculus and Complex Variables" - Dr. Martin Flashman
January 29 - "The Pythagorian Theorem and the Enduring Beauty of Mathematics" - John Martin
December 11 - "Matrix Factorizations" - Dr. Andrew Conner
December 4 - "Colorectal Cancer Screening and the Simplest Random Variables" - Dr. Joseph Carroll
November 20 - "Mathematics Videos" - Dr. Jeff Haag
November 13 - "Positive Polynomials and their Applications" - Dr. Richard Spjut
November 6 - No Colloquium
October 29 - "The Space of Polynomials from 1540 to today" - Dr. Benson Farb
October 23 - "Adventures in Plasma Physics" - Dr. Kenneth Owens, Tim Lauck
October 16 - "Why does Calculus Matter?" - Dr. Adamou Fodé Madé
October 9 - "Partitions are Everywhere!" - Dr. Ben Ford
September 25 - "Models of Human Locomotion" - Dr. Justus Ortega
September 18 - "Using Fubini's Principle in Counting Problems" - Dr. Dale Oliver
September 11 - "Products with Vectors" - Dr. Jeff Haag
