Math and Stats Club
Welcome to the Math and Stats Club at CSU Monterey Bay!
Below is a link to the math and stats club webpage as well as a list of our upcoming events.
Check out our Math & Stats Club page for more!
Math & Stats Events
September 9, 2019 - Ethnomathematics: The Logic of Kin Relations
Presenter: Dr. Peri Shereen, CSUMB
Abstract: From a young age we learn the basics. We learn how to add numbers, and we learn to identify familial relations such as mom and dad. Would you believe me if I told you these two notions could be related? The structure of adding integers can be generalized to the idea of the group. By the end of this talk, you will learn of a fascinating connection between the kinship structure of a group of Australian aboriginal and the well known Dihedral group of order 8. You will not be expected to have any prior group theory knowledge.
When: September 9, 2019 from 12:00 pm to 12:50 pm
Where: Chapman Science Center S217
Refreshments provided
September 9, 2019 - Social Event with the Math & Stats Club!
● Summer Research & Capstone Posters ●
Presenters: Your Fellow Students
When: September 9, 2019 from 1:00 pm to 1:50 pm
Where: Chapman Science Center S217
Refreshments provided
October 7, 2019 - Choosing the Best: Decision-Making Under Uncertainty
Presenter: Dr. Allan Rossman, Cal Poly SLO
Abstract: A classic probability problem known as the “Secretary Problem” illustrates the utility of probabilistic thinking when making decisions under uncertainty. The problem is easy to state: Your task is to hire a new employee for your company. You know how many candidates have applied, you interview them one-at-a-time in random order, and you can rank the candidates after you have interviewed them. But the rules are that you have to decide immediately whether or not to hire a candidate (i.e., you can't invite one back later), and you must hire THE best candidate (i.e., if you hire the second best one, you have failed). We will devise a clever strategy for choosing the best candidate and will explore how (surprisingly) well the strategy performs with both small and large numbers of candidates. We will also consider a gambling application and ponder whether the optimal strategy is relevant to finding your soulmate in life!
When: October 7, 2019 from 12:00 pm to 12:50 pm
Where: Chapman Science Center S217
Refreshments provided
October 7, 2019 - Social Event with the Math & Stats Club!
● Origami Paper Folding ●
When: October 7, 2019 from 1:00 pm to 1:50 pm
Where: Chapman Science Center S217
Refreshments provided
November 4, 2019 - Tropical Principal Component Analysis on Tree Spaces
Presenter: Dr. Rudy Yoshida, Naval Postgraduate School
In 2004, Speyer and Sturmfels showed that a space of phylogenetic trees with fixed set of leaves is a tropical Grassmannian under the max-plus tropical semiring, i.e., a tropical linear space defined by the tropicalization of linear equations. Therefore it is natural to apply tropical arithmetics to conduct statistical analyses over a tree space under the tropical metric, such as tropical principal component analysis (PCA). PCA is a widely-used method for the dimensionality reduction of a given data set in a high-dimensional Euclidean space. Here we define two analogues of principal component analysis in the setting of tropical geometry. In one approach, we study the Stiefel tropical linear space of fixed dimension closest to the data points in the tropical projective torus; in the other approach, we consider the tropical polytope with a fixed number of vertices closest to the data points. In this talk we will discuss the tropical PCA as a tropical polytope over a tree space. We then give approximative algorithms for both approaches. We end this talk with applications to empirical datasets: Apicomplexa gene trees, the African coelacanth genome, and hemoglobin sequences of influenza virus collected from the state of New York.
When: November 4, 2019 from 12:00 pm to 12:50 pm
Where: Chapman Science Center S217
Refreshments provided
November 4, 2019 - Social Event with the Math & Stats Club!
● Math Puzzles and Games ●
When: November 4, 2019 from 1:00 pm to 1:50 pm
Where: Chapman Science Center S217
Refreshments provided
December 2, 2019 - How Students Legitimize Peers' Voices: Implications for Implementing Groupwork that Promotes Mathematical Practices
Presenter: Anthony Muro Villa lll, Stanford University - Doctoral Candidate in Mathematics Education
Mathematics educators have long sought equitable teaching practices. The classroom conditions that promote or inhibit students’ ability to demonstrate mathematical competence is of major concern. My research examines this concern by analyzing how authority operates in classrooms that implement groupwork. In mathematics classrooms, beliefs about who has intellectual or social authority can fluctuate, and inequities can be further impacted by classroom norms and the types of mathematics students have access to. While investigating how students collectively work on a mathematics task, this talk conceptualizes students that act as “social and/or emotional interlocutors” – students who take part in facilitating the legitimacy of others’ authority – that move the small group toward more shared, non-localized authority. We will watch video of student groupwork and consider how the presence of social and/or emotional interlocutors coincided with small groups that enacted more mathematical practices, even when the mathematics task was not particularly “group-worthy.” We will conclude with a discussion on the implications for how we implement groupwork and develop social and/or emotional skills that can promote peer enactment of mathematical practices. Mathematics educators have long sought equitable teaching practices. The classroom conditions that promote or inhibit students’ ability to demonstrate mathematical competence is of major concern. My research examines this concern by analyzing how authority operates in classrooms that implement groupwork. In mathematics classrooms, beliefs about who has intellectual or social authority can fluctuate, and inequities can be further impacted by classroom norms and the types of mathematics students have access to. While investigating how students collectively work on a mathematics task, this talk conceptualizes students that act as “social and/or emotional interlocutors” – students who take part in facilitating the legitimacy of others’ authority – that move the small group toward more shared, non-localized authority. We will watch video of student groupwork and consider how the presence of social and/or emotional interlocutors coincided with small groups that enacted more mathematical practices, even when the mathematics task was not particularly “group-worthy.” We will conclude with a discussion on the implications for how we implement groupwork and develop social and/or emotional skills that can promote peer enactment of mathematical practices. Mathematics educators have long sought equitable teaching practices. The classroom conditions that promote or inhibit students’ ability to demonstrate mathematical competence is of major concern. My research examines this concern by analyzing how authority operates in classrooms that implement groupwork. In mathematics classrooms, beliefs about who has intellectual or social authority can fluctuate, and inequities can be further impacted by classroom norms and the types of mathematics students have access to. While investigating how students collectively work on a mathematics task, this talk conceptualizes students that act as “social and/or emotional interlocutors” – students who take part in facilitating the legitimacy of others’ authority – that move the small group toward more shared, non-localized authority. We will watch video of student groupwork and consider how the presence of social and/or emotional interlocutors coincided with small groups that enacted more mathematical practices, even when the mathematics task was not particularly “group-worthy.” We will conclude with a discussion on the implications for how we implement groupwork and develop social and/or emotional skills that can promote peer enactment of mathematical practices.
When: December 2, 2019 from 12:00 pm to 12:50 pm
Where: Chapman Science Center S219
Refreshments provided