Past Events
Scientific, Distinguished Lecture
PIMS Distinguished Chair Lecturer - Bubblesort and Juggling Sequences
October 22, 2009
University of Victoria
In this talk I will describe some recent results concerning the connection between the bubblesort sorting algorithm and certain integer sequences used to analyze various juggling patterns. The analysis leads to new results on the joint distribution...
Scientific, Distinguished Lecture
Math Biology Seminar: Biological aggregation patterns and the role of social interactions
October 22, 2009
University of British Columbia
Biological aggregations such as insect swarms, bird flocks, and fish schools are arguably some of the most common and least understood patterns in nature. In this talk, I will discuss recent work on swarming models, focusing on the connection between...
Scientific, Seminar
Probability Seminar: Group Field Theory
October 21, 2009
University of British Columbia
Group field theory is the higher-dimensional generalization of random matrix models. As it has built-in scales and automatically sums over metrics and discretizations, it provides a combinatoric origin for space time. Its graphs facilitate a new...
Scientific, Seminar
SCAIM Seminar: Efficient High-Order Hybrid Elements for the Wave Equations
October 20, 2009
University of British Columbia
Gauss-Lobatto spectral elements, based on hexahedral meshes, provide a very efficient way to solve transient wave equations in terms of storage and of computational time. Unfortunately, it is very difficult and almost impossible in some cases to...
Scientific, Distinguished Lecture
Algebraic Geometry Seminar: The zero locus of an admissible normal function
October 19, 2009
University of British Columbia
If H is a variation of Hodge structure over a variety S, then there is a family of complex tori J(H) over S associated to H. Admissible normal functions are certain sections of J(H) over S. Roughly speaking, they are the ones that have the...
Scientific, Conference
2009 Northwest Functional Analysis Seminar
October 16–18, 2009
University of Alberta
The Northwest Functional Analysis Seminar (NWFAS) is a bi-annual regional scientific meeting of researchers (faculty and postdoctoral) and graduate students in functional analysis. Participants are drawn from universities in Western Canada and the...
Scientific, Distinguished Lecture
PIMS-CSC Seminar: Measuring the phonetic similarity between speech sounds
October 16, 2009
Simon Fraser University
This talk demonstrates a new metric for measuring phonetic similarity between speech sounds, based on several types of phonetic data collected for a set of 130 consonants and vowels. Phonetic similarity is frequently invoked for explaining a wide...
Educational
Lesson Studies at UBC
October 16, 2009 – April 24, 2010
University of British Columbia
What are Lesson Studies? "Lesson Studies", in various formats, have become popular in the teaching community as a means of professional development. The Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences (PIMS) will offer a series of workshops closely...
Educational
Math Mania - Victoria
October 15, 2009
University of Victoria
Math Mania - Demonstrations of fun methods to teach math and computer science concepts to students, teachers and parents through games and art.
Scientific, Distinguished Lecture
Topology Seminar: Equivariant Lefschetz invariants via analysis
October 15, 2009
University of British Columbia
Equivariant Lefschetz invariants have already appeared in algebraic topology. Here I will show how to approach them using the so-called equivariant KK-theory of Kasparov — the main tool of the new field of noncommutative geometry. I will sketch the...