Articles from:January 2020

  • Congratulations to Basil Nanayakkara and the Department of Mathematics and Statistics

    Wednesday, January 29, 2020 | By

    On Monday, January 27th 2020, the Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Science invited members to the 6th Annual Celebration of Excellence. One of our members of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Basil Nanayakkara, was recognized by the students of the Faculty of Mathematics and Science Council for the Teaching & Student Engagement Award. Basil received this award due to his excellence in teaching and his commitment to helping his students understand challenging material. This is the second time he has been the recipient of this award. In 2014, with a completely different set of undergraduate students, he had also been their choice. Congratulations Basil!

    The Department of Mathematics and Statistics was honoured by the Dean for achieving the highest financial surplus in the Faculty with the Highest Departmental Surplus Award. The Chair of Mathematics and Statistics, Dr. Thomas Wolf, wishes to thank the Dean for recognizing us and all members of the Department for their contribution.

  • Colloquium Talk Dr. Michelle Molino: An introduction to Symmetric Determinantal Varieties

    Tuesday, January 28, 2020 | By

    The Department of Mathematics and Statistics would like to invite graduate students as well as anyone else interested to a talk by Dr. Michelle Molino entitled An introduction to Symmetric Determinantal Varieties. The talk will take place on Monday February 3 from 12:30 PM to 1:30 PM and be held in Thistle room 240. Graduate students are encouraged to attend.  Note: This post has been updated to a new time and location for the talk.

    Abstract:
    In this talk, we will introduce the definition, main results, and properties of symmetric determinantal varieties. In addition, we are going to define the multiplicity of a pair of modules, and calculate such multiplicity for a special pair of modules (Jacobian and Normal modules) associated with a symmetric determinantal variety. Finally, we will show the connection between this multiplicity and the Singular Theory.

  • Colloquium Talk Dr. Paul Voutier: Explicit Effective Diophantine Approximation

    Wednesday, January 08, 2020 | By

    The Department of Mathematics and Statistics would like to invite graduate students as well as anyone else interested to a talk by Dr. Paul Voutier entitled Explicit Effective Diophantine Approximation. The talk will take place on Friday January 10 from 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM and be held in Goodman School of Business room 408. This lecture will be accessible to graduate students,and even enthusiastic advanced undergraduates.

    Abstract:
    Diophantine problems go back to the early days of civilisation. Our earliest written evidence of such problems is found on the famous Babylonian clay tablet, Plimpton 322, dating back to 1800BC. Diophantine problems continue to play an important role up to the present day with the use of elliptic curves in cryptography. There are several categories of diophantine results. We speak of qualitative, quantitative, elective and explicit elective results. In this lecture, we focus on the last of these: explicit elective results. Under certain conditions, we can obtain very good explicit bounds on how well we can approximate some interesting irrational numbers by rational numbers. That is the goal of this lecture: providing a clear presentation of such techniques, while also providing insights into the latest and sharpest results in this area.

  • Congratulations to Rachel Morris

    Wednesday, January 08, 2020 | By

    Our former Statistics Master student Rachel Morris starts a new Data Analyst position at Sun Life Insurance Canada in Waterloo, Ontario this January. Congratulations Rachel! We wish you continued success!