Undergraduate Colloquium Winter 2009

January 15, 2009

Games Night

Dr. Frank Bauerle, Lecturer, UCSC Mathematics Department 

In order to start off the quarter with some fun, we will be hosting Games Night. This week, instead of focusing on a single game we will be playing variety of Games, exploring new and different strategies. A few examples of some we may choose from are: Settler's of Catan, Ricochet Robots, Quoridor, and Set.

January 22, 2009

Games Night

Dr. Frank Bauerle, Lecturer, UCSC Mathematics Department 

This week we will be hosting Games Night and instead of focusing on a single game we will be playing variety of games, exploring new and different strategies. A few examples of some we may choose from are: Settler's of Catan, Ricochet Robots, Quoridor, and Set.

January 29, 2009

Movie Night: The Millennium Prize Problems

Dr. Frank Bauerle, Lecturer, UCSC Mathematics Department 

You probably don't immediately think of solving a mathematics problem as your ticket to becoming a millionaire. And it sure will not be easy, but it is possible. In the movie "The Millennium Prize Problems" with John Tate as lecturer you will be exposed to three of the most intriguing and interesting open problems in mathematics. The original list contained seven problems, but it is widely believed that one of them has since been solved by Grigory Perelman, a Russian mathematician (See http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PoincareConjecture.html for more details).

February 5, 2009

Two Paradoxes and Their Influence on the Development of Mathematics and Logic

Dr. Frank Bauerle, Lecturer, UCSC Mathematics Department 

In the first half of this talk we will discuss the "Liar's Paradox" and Goedel's creative use of it in his first incompleteness theorem. Secondly we will look at "Galileo's Paradox" about infinity, and discuss Cantor's solution to this dilemma. Then we will conclude by connecting both topics through Cantor's "Continuum Hypothesis". 

February 12, 2009

Games Night: Jeopardy

Dr. Frank Bauerle, Lecturer, UCSC Mathematics Department 

This Undergraduate Colloquium will be the usual gathering in BE 301A on Thursday afternoon at 3:45pm for tea/coffee/cakes/cookies, etc. and will be followed by a game of Jeopardy! from 4-5pm. The questions will be on various subjects (including of course math). There might even be prizes! Hope to see you there!  

February 19, 2009

Games Night: Settlers of Catan

Dr. Frank Bauerle, Lecturer, UCSC Mathematics Department 

This week we will be playing Settlers of Catan, a multiplayer board game designed by Klaus Teuber. It was first published in 1995 in Germany by Franckh-Kosmos Verlags-GmbH & Co. (Kosmos) under the name Die Siedler von Catan. Briefly, The players in the game represent the eponymous settlers, establishing a colony on the previously uninhabited island of Catan. The island itself is laid out randomly at the beginning of each game from hexagonal tiles ("hexes") of different land types. Numbered tokens are then placed on each of the tiles, except for one desert hex. 

February 26, 2009

The p-adic numbers

Professor Robert Boltje 

Everybody is familiar with the numbers denoted by Z, Q and R, the integers, the rational numbers and the real numbers. Less well-known are the p-adic integers Zp and the p-adic numbers Qp(which can be constructed for every prime p), although they should be on equal footing with the real numbers. One can perform analysis with Qp as with R. The theorems are even nicer and simpler. The p-adic numbers are mainly used as a tool in number theory to focus on one prime at a time.

March 5, 2009

Games Night: Twixt

Dr. Frank Bauerle, Lecturer, UCSC Mathematics Department 

Twixt is a two-player abstract strategy game and a member of the connection game family. The game is played as two players take turns placing their pegs in the game board, which is a grid of holes. After placing a peg, you may link one or more pairs of pegs on the board, which are all your own color. The first player to make a continuous chain of linked pieces connecting their two sides wins.

March 12, 2009

Movie Night: Infinite Series: Archimedes and Pi

Dr. Frank Bauerle, Lecturer, UCSC Mathematics Department 

In celebration of Pi Day, Saturday, 03/14, we will be showing Infinite Secrets, a NOVA episode on Archimedes and Pi. Archimedes is the most famous of the ancient mathematicians and the first to discover the value for Pi. He wanted to find a value as close as reasonably possible to the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. He devised an ingenious method using straight lines to measure a circle, finding the value for Pi. It has become one of the most widely used mathematical values today.