Author: max

The first MCS Department poetry contest brought out the best from our students.  Three of them have been selected as finalists, with the help of expert judges from the Gustavus English Department.  Congratulations to Erik Alquist, Katie O’Bryan, and Bethany Ringdal!  These three have now been invited to read their poems at the start of Francis Su’s lecture,…

The first-ever Math/Computer Science Faculty Art Exhibit opens Monday, April 14, in the lobby of the third floor of Olin Hall. Lois Peterson (art & art history) is the curator for the exhibit, which includes weavings, needlework, origami, woodworking, hand-tied fly-fishing lures, and other creative visual work produced by the faculty of the MCS Department.…

Prof. Stephen Samuel11:30-12:20 on Wednesday, April 9, 2008Olin Hall, Room 321Lunch will be served The concept of fuzzy sets is an attempt to capture the inherently imprecise linguistic concepts in terms of mathematical expressions. This became absolutely necessary in late sixties as the irresistible quest for imitating the human brain became a predominant issue in…

This is the strange story of how Gustavus math contest t-shirts have come to adorn a rock star.  In this post, all photos are thumbnails: click on them for the full-sized images.

To celebrate April being both Math Awareness Month and Poetry Month, the Gustavus Mathematics and Computer Science Department invites all Gustavus students to participate in a poetry contest with the opportunity to win a $50 prize and public recognition. Submissions are due by April 10, 2008, and the winner will be announced May 1st.

Dr. Baili Chen, Washington University in St. Louis, Candidate for MCS faculty position Tuesday, March 11, 2008 at 3:30PM in Olin 320 Visual motion detection is one of the most active areas in neuroscience today. In this paper, we investigate the mechanism of motion-detection in the fly’s visual cortex. First, we investigate how the direction…

Eric A. Barnitt (Mayo Clinic, Gustavus ’07) 11:30-12:20 on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 Olin Hall, Room 321 Lunch will be served The field of medical research is one that is vast and growing. Researchers are pushing to find new ways to understand complex medical questions in virtually every field of medicine. My talk addresses how…

Mathematics Awareness Month Lecture by Francis Edward Su (Harvey Mudd College) 7:00 PM, May 1st, 2008 Olin Hall, Room 103 When can a majority of voters find common ground, that is, a position they all agree upon? How does the shape of the political spectrum influence the outcome? What does mathematics have to say about how people…

Congratulations to the team of Erick Knight, Mark Myers, and Chenyu Yang for winning the 2008 Konhauser Problemfest!  Professor Rietz reports that the team score was 99  out of 100;  the next highest score was 90.  As a result, the unique traveling trophy associated with this math contest is now lodged at Gustavus; it is…