University of Washington

Starting from just a sheet of paper, by folding, stacking, crumpling, sometimes tearing, we will explore a variety of phenomena, from magic tricks and geometry to elasticity and the traditional Japanese art of origami. Much of the show consists of...

Our world swirls with percentages, ratios, and graphs. These numbers are often presumed to be objective reflections of reality. But they are not. To measure a human-designed society requires human-designed measures, with all attendant foibles folded...

The 22nd Northwest Probability Seminar is supported by the University of Oregon, Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences (PIMS), Baidu, University of Washington (Friends of Mathematics Fund), and Milliman Fund. The Birnbaum Lecture in...

The periodic orbits and their structure are fundamental features of a dynamical system. In an algebraic setting, where the system is defined by polynomials, we can use tools from algebraic or arithmetic geometry to study these orbits. Important...

A nodal real algebraic curve in the affine plane is called expressive if its defining polynomial has the smallest number of critical points that is allowed by the topology of the set of real points of the curve. This notion can be viewed as a "global...

A useful way of producing samples from a given measure ν on a state space Ω is by providing a Markov chain whose stationary measure in ν. In order to be able to sample efficiently, one needs to show that the chain "mixes" quickly in terms of the rate...

Otto calculus is a fundamental toolbox in mathematical optimal transport, imparting the Wasserstein space of probability measures with a Riemmanian structure. In particular, one can compute the Riemannian gradient of a functional over this space and...

A group is just a set together with a multiplication with certain properties, and these are ubiquitous in modern mathematics. In homotopy theory, we often see less-rigid objects, with many of the properties like associativity or commutativity only...

Diophantine geometry is a modern-day incarnation of mathematicians' perennial interest in solving algebraic equations in integers. Its fundamental idea is to study the geometric objects defined by algebraic equations in order to understand their...

Residue calculus is, of course, a very powerful way to evaluate many different kinds of integrals. For multivariate integrals, however, it may get really cumbersome, to the point that one sometimes gets stuck in purely combinatorial complexity. I...