Mathematics

Dirichlet’s class number formula has a nice conjectural generalization in the form of Stark’s conjectures. These conjectures pertain to the value of Artin L-series at s = 1. However, the special values at other integer points also are interesting and in this context, there is a famous conjecture of Zagier. We will give a brief outline of this and display some recent results.

This lecture is part of a series of 3.

• Lecture 1: Introduction to Artin L-series
• Lecture 2: Holomorphy Conjecture and Recent Progress
• Lecture 3: Special Values of Artin L-series

After defining Artin L-series, we will discuss the Chebotarev density theorem and its applications.

This lecture is part of a series of 3.

• Lecture 1: Introduction to Artin L-series
• Lecture 2: Holomorphy Conjecture and Recent Progress
• Lecture 3: Special Values of Artin L-series

In Small Num­ber and the Old Canoe math­e­mat­ics is present through­out the story with the hope that this expe­ri­ence will make at least some mem­bers of our young audi­ence, with the moderator’s help, rec­og­nize more math­e­mat­ics around them in their every­day lives. We use terms like smooth, shape, oval, and sur­face, the math­e­mat­i­cal phrase­ol­ogy like, It must be at least a hun­dred years old, the artist skill­fully presents reflec­tion (sym­me­try) of trees in water, and so on. The idea behind this approach is to give the mod­er­a­tor a few open­ings to intro­duce or empha­size var­i­ous math­e­mat­i­cal objects, con­cepts, and ter­mi­nol­ogy. The short film is a lit­tle math sus­pense story and our ques­tion is related only to one part of it. The aim of the ques­tion is to lead to an intro­duc­tion at an intu­itive level of the con­cept of a func­tion and the essence of the prin­ci­ple of inclusion-exclusion as a count­ing tech­nique. The authors would also like to give their audi­ence an oppor­tu­nity to appre­ci­ate that in order to under­stand a math ques­tion, one often needs to read (or in this case, watch) a prob­lem more than once.

For additional details see http://mathcatcher.irmacs.sfu.ca/story/small-number-and-old-canoe

N.B. The audio introduction of this lecture has not been properly captured.

The quantification of uncertainty in large-scale scientific and engineering computations is rapidly emerging as a research area that poses some very challenging fundamental problems which go well beyond sensitivity analysis and associated small fluctuation theories. We want to understand complex systems that operate in regimes where small changes in parameters can lead to very different solutions. How are these regimes characterized? Can the small probabilities of large (possibly catastrophic) changes be calculated? These questions lead us into systemic risk analysis, that is, the calculation of probabilities that a large number of components in a complex, interconnected system will fail simultaneously.

I will give a brief overview of these problems and then discuss in some detail two model problems. One is a mean field model of interacting diffusion and the other a large deviation problem for conservation laws. The first is motivated by financial systems and the second by problems in combustion, but they are considerably simplified so as to carry out a mathematical analysis. The results do, however, give us insight into how to design numerical methods where detailed analysis is impossible.