MCS

Category: department news

  • Benoît Mandelbrot (1924-2010); Fractal pioneer spoke at Nobel Conference in 1990

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    max

    The New York Times has an obituary for Benoît Mandelbrot, the pioneer of fractal geometry, who is dead at 85. From the Gustavus viewpoint, he can be remembered as a speaker at the 1990 Nobel Conference on the topic “Chaos: The New Science”. Unlike recent Nobel Conferences with lectures preserved as archived video, Mandelbrot’s lecture…

  • Computer Science Alumni to be Honored

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    anienow2

    Departmental alumni, Travis and Nathan Dahlke (2000 and 2002), will be receiving the Association of Congregations Service Award Check out the full write up here

  • Math T-Shirt to Rock Minneapolis!

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    max

    Two and a half years ago, I posted on this blog about the seemingly indestructible t-shirts from the 1979 and 1980 Gustavus math contests that Oliver Ackerman regularly wears while performing. To update that story, Ernie Ackerman emailed me two news items. (1) At least the 1979 shirt is still going strong; it is clearly…

  • MCS Department joins Facebook

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    anienow2

    The MCS Department is now on Facebook. Check us out. Join the group and stay up to date on upcoming events, seminars, MCS club gatherings, contests, and departmental news. Click here to see.

  • New Faces in MCS

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    tlofaro

    Two new Visiting Professors have joined the Mathematics and Computer Science Department this year.  Russ Park has joined us from Arizona State University and Choong-Soo Lee from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Russ joined the department last February.  He completed his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering at San Diego State University in 1984 and then worked for…

  • Crime Distance and Background Probability in Geoprofiling

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    max

    Seminar by Chen Yu Yang, Gustavus Mathematics Major Wednesday, May 12, 2010 at 11:30 AM in Olin 321 This work on geoprofiling builds on my collaboration with Sam Rethwisch and Eric Cox in the Mathematical Contest in Modeling 2010. Geoprofiling is a technique to locate criminals based on historical data, proposed by Rossmo in his…

  • Understanding the Challenges of Freecell

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    max

    Seminar by Katie O’Bryan, Gustavus Mathematics Major Wednesday, May 5, 2010 at 12:30 PM in Olin 321 Looking at the Freecell derivation of Solitaire, I will discuss the history and fundamentals of Freecell as well as the applications of statistics and probability to the game. Many people have been acquainted with Freecell through use of…

  • Hvidsten’s Robotics Course a Hit at UIC

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    max

    Gustavus Math/CS prof Mike Hvidsten is on leave this year at UIC in Zhuhai China, and the robotics course he is teaching is a real hit there. The course is modeled on one he taught at Gustavus along with Physics professor Tom Huber.

  • Student Blogs from Budapest

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    max

    It’s taken me a few months to notice that one of our students, Jennifer Van Osdel, has been busily blogging her experiences from the Budapest Semesters in Mathematics. Definitely worth reading!

  • Burnt pancakes, DNA, and the Symmetric Group: or, how Bill Gates became a billionaire

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    max

    Seminar by Jonathan Kujawa, Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oklahoma and 1997 Gustavus Mathematics Major Monday, April 12, 2010 at 11:30AM in Olin 321216 We will discuss how serious problems from biology and playful problems from mathematics surprisingly coincide. The answer to both involve developing algorithms within the symmetric group. I’ll tell…