Math Conference
I just came back from four days of non-stop math action at the Canadian Undergraduate Math Conference. It was well attended for an undergraduate conference: we had about a hundred people, with only eight from SFU.
The opening keynote speaker was by Peter Borwein on the Riemann Hypothesis. The Riemann hypothesis is a conjecture about the connection between the zeros of the Riemann-Zeta function and the distribution of prime numbers. The first quarter (being generous) of the talk was interesting to me: large computations, experimental mathematics and the millennium problems. The latter part of the talk quickly jumped into complicated number theory and other things I’ve never seen before. An interesting note is that the Riemann hypothesis has been tested to about 1.5 billion numbers.
The second keynote was by Frank Morgan on Soap Bubble mathematics. Keeping volume constant, the shape with the minimal surface area is a sphere. With more than one bubble, figuring out the shape of the bubbles is non-trivial. Another interesting fact is that it’s more efficient if the highways meet at 120 degrees instead of 90 degrees as in crossroads. The net distance that you’d have to travel is reduced.
The third keynote was by Leah Edelstein-Keshet on Mathematical Biology. The math part of the talk was interesting because I was familiar with some of the pattern formation PDE models that you see in nature as in Zebras and Giraffes for example. The model is based on Reaction-Diffusion systems, which I had studied in the Ginzburg-Landau equation. The Ginzburg-Landau equation also forms patterns when carbon monooxide diffuses and reacts on Platinum surfaces.
I’ll be posting details about my talk on Fluid Image Registration soon.