Archive for 2007

Newest Addition to the MCS Dept.

 Well, OK, he is as much an addition to the Chemistry Department as to MCS.  Allan Richard Nienow was born December 23, 2007, at 2:37pm, weighing 6 lb. 13 oz. and measuring 21.5 inches.   Mother and baby are reported to be doing well.  Congratulations to Amanda and Aaron!

Moebius Transformations, Visualized in 3d

This short animation on youtube has a very interesting visualization of Moebius transformations which shows how they can be directly projection mapped to emanate from a 3d sphere.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JX3VmDgiFnY&NR=1

Gusties Place #1 of 53 in Regional Math Contest

A team of Gustavus students took 1st place out of the 53 teams competing in the mathematics contest sponsored by the North Central Section of the Mathematics Association of America.  Gustavus’s “Team Erick,” consisting of Erick Knight, Sarah Cowles, and Andy Scott, earned a higher score than any of the other 52 teams in the […]

Euler, Dollond, and the Achromatic Telescope Controversy

Erik Tou, Carthage College (and Gustavus alumnus) 11:30-12:20 on Wednesday, December 12, 2007 Olin Hall, Room 320 Lunch will be served Leonhard Euler was the most prolific mathematician of the 18th century. He wrote over 800 books and papers during his career, many of which were published long after his death. While much of Euler’s […]

The Uncertainty Principle and Image Reconstruction

Eric S. Weber, Iowa State University (and Gustavus alumnus) 3:30-4:20pm on Tuesday, October 30 Olin Hall, Room 320 The Uncertainty Principle is a well-known phenomenon from physics, placing a lower bound on the error present in simultaneous measurements of position and momentum of a particle. However, it actually is a mathematical phenomenon, and we will […]

Wasp Sex: Using the Likelihood Ratio Test to Compare Models of Sex Determination in C. vestalis

Aaron Rendahl, University of Minnesota School of Statistics 11:30-12:20 on Wednesday, November 14, 2007 Olin Hall, Room 320 Lunch will be served The likelihood ratio test is an important statistical method for comparing two competing hypotheses. While it is the theoretical justification for many standard statistical tests, it can also be useful for problems where […]

MCS, Physics Profs Get Robotics Grant

Mike Hvidsten and Tom Huber from the MCS and Phsyics Departments just got a very nice grant from Sun Microsystems that will allow the two of them to modernize the Robotics Workshop course, which they will be team teaching in January of 2008. Sun is providing 11 SunSPOT development systems, valued at a total of […]

Operations Research: Some Practical Examples

Nathan Annis Thursday, October 11th, 3:30-4:20pm Olin Hall, Room 321 What is Operations Research? What does someone educated in this field actually do? Nathan Annis, a 2003 graduate of Gustavus, later earned a graduate degree in Operations Research and is now employed at Hormel Foods. He will present real-world examples applying the tools of optimization, […]

Graduate School Information Seminar

11:30-12:20 on Wednesday, September 26, 2007 Olin Hall, Room 320 Our next seminar will be focused on presenting information on graduate school opportunities in math, computer science, and statistics. If you are considering graduate school, come and listen to the combined wisdom of departmental professors Carolyn Dobler, San Skulrattanakulchai, and Andrey Glubokov. As always, pizza […]

A Very Knotty Differential Equation

Prof. Tom LoFaro will present the first seminar talk of the year. 11:30-12:20 on Wednesday, September 19, 2007 Olin Hall, Room 320 Lunch will be served In 1996 Rob Ghrist and Phil Holmes published a remarkable paper entitled “An ODE Whose Solutions Contain All Knots and Links” where they provided sufficient conditions for an ordinary […]