Author Archives: TMS

TMS Week 2 – Prof. Frank Wilczek of MIT (2004 Nobel Prize)

Leave a reply

TMS Week 2: Prof. Frank Wilczek of MIT (2004 Nobel Prize)
19 Oct, 8:30pm
Speaking about Quantum Physics.

Please sign up here, no later than the end of Sunday before the talk. The Zoom link for the talk will be sent to you on Monday.

https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=RQSlSfq9eUut41R7TzmG6acY3tLnpVJAhu0qqoNKxq9UNDQ4OU5LVFdaSlU2N1ZRTVIyUzZEMFBFVS4u

TMS Week 1 – Prof. Béla Bollobás (FRS) of Trinity College, Cambridge

Leave a reply

TMS Week 1 – Prof. Béla Bollobás (FRS) of Trinity College, Cambridge
12 Oct, 8:30pm
Speaking about Combinatorics.

Please sign up here, no later than the end of Sunday before the talk. The Zoom link for the talk will be sent to you on Monday.

https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=RQSlSfq9eUut41R7TzmG6acY3tLnpVJAhu0qqoNKxq9UQUZGVk9SRzRFRjhHS1VEVUVWOFVMSFlNMy4u

 

TMS Michaelmas Termcard 2020/21 and Welcome

Leave a reply
Dear TMS Members old and new,
A warm welcome from all of us in the Trinity Mathematical Society Committee. With the advent of the 2020/21 academic year, we are delighted to share news regarding an excellent range of speakers, free entry to talks this term, and updated outreach.

Michaelmas Termcard

We are proud to present a diverse range of acclaimed speakers, including a Nobel Prize Winner, professors from Harvard, MIT and Columbia University, and the esteemed Professor Béla Bollobás of Trinity College. Please find the Termcard attached (with an updated design for this year).

Free Entry for Michaelmas Term

For Michaelmas Term only, TMS talks will be available to all. A form will be sent out a few days before each talk, and those who sign up will be sent the Zoom link for the talk on the day. Becoming a member of the TMS traditionally requires £2.50 for lifetime membership, but we have deferred such matters to Lent Term, providing open access to talks this term.

Updated Outreach

We encourage our new members to explore the history of the TMS, now in its 102nd year. You can research further on our website. Updates can also be found on our Facebook group. Starting from this year, we have also implemented a feedback system, should you have any suggestions for new events, feedback for the talks, or any other request in general. All resources are listed below.
We look forward to seeing you at the talks. Details about the first talk and a message from our sponsors, Jump Trading, will be sent in further emails.
All the best,
Michael Ng
TMS Secretary 2020/21

Easter Reading Material

Leave a reply
Edit: link is in the pdf, but adding here again for clarity: bit.ly/2yltuDe
Hope everyone is doing well. To provide some entertainment during Easter Term, we’ve asked around for reading recommendation from various academics. All these topics are strictly not Tripos or standard curriculum material. Material ranges from introductory topics to modern research. Please find these attached.
We will set up a forum in due course for people to read and discuss these texts together. If you have issues obtaining the reading material, please email Misha (TMS President) under mjs297@cam.ac.uk. Enjoy and have fun!

Well Wishes to the TMS Community, TMS AGM 2020-21 Results

Leave a reply

The TMS Committee wishes everyone good health and safety through this difficult time. Thank you for being part of the 101-year-old TMS community. We are exploring options for remote events during Easter Term. The TMS AGM happened at the end of term, and a new committee for 2020-2021 was elected:

President: Misha Schmalian
Vice President: David Veres
Secretary: Michael Ng
Junior Treasurer: Arthur Ushenin
Membership Secretary: Valentin Imbach

Constable: –

We are indeed going through difficult times, and indeed, it’s hard to take away anything positive from these circumstances. So I’ll add a mathematical joke in the hope that this email might bring you some light entertainment… (answer below)

Q: Why was the quadratic tree with negative discriminant unable to absorb nutrients?
A: Because it had imaginary roots!

TMS Symposium 2020

Leave a reply

The TMS is back with its annual symposium, followed by the TMS Dinner. We have a fantastic line-up of speakers – from functional programming to colouring cubes, elliptic curves to basilisk lizards, and even using number theory in the Standard Model.

The full schedule can be found below and here: http://talks.cam.ac.uk/show/index/33747

TMS Symposium – 7th of March 2020 – Winstanley Lecture Theatre

– 10:00-10:30:
“I just want to be pure.” – graded monads for program analysis -Andrej Ivaskovic (computer laboratory).
Abstract: Functional programmers (especially the Haskell ones) are obsessed with making their functions pure, so they resemble mathematical (partial) functions. The most common way effectful code is written in Haskell is by using monads. In this talk, I will show how recent developments in the research of graded monads can be used to automatically verify useful properties of programs.
– 10:40-11:10:
An introduction to descent calculations on elliptic curves. -Jiali Yan (dpmms).
The explicit rank of the group of rational points of an elliptic curve is a center of interest in computational number theory. This is because the ranks are closely related to explicit rational solutions to certain algebraic equations. One common method of obtaining an upper bound for the rank is via the descent calculation.
This talk begins with an introduction to elliptic curves and descent calculation. We will explore how the descent calculation can bound the rank of elliptic curves. In the end, we will briefly discuss some generalisation of this method.
– 11:20-11:50:
Gaussian Latent Tree Models and their Statistics. -Thomas Marge (statslab)
Signal processing strategies and statistics for identifying the presence of evolution in continuous signals is investigated. Consider a feature to be a function on the original signal which contains information about the signal. Under this framework, a model for multivariate Gaussian features observed across related signals is described. The model considers the possibility that some features in the signal are tree amenable while others are not. A model for identifying candidate features using wavelet transforms is also described. Tree amenability is then explored from the perspective of data thresholding. Because of the high type-1 and type-2 error rates of know tests for Gaussian tree amenability, a measure of how tree amenable a feature is has been developed. A methodology is proposed for reconstructing only the tree amenable components of a signal to improve interoperability of the model. Rigorous statistical methods are then defined to test for both tree amenability as well as general structure in the data. To test and better understand these methods, strategies are described to randomly generate tree amenable data.
– 12:00-12:30:
Intervals in the Hales-Jewett theorem. -Eero Raty (dpmms).
The Hales-Jewett theorem for alphabet of size 3 states that whenever the cube {1, 2, 3}^n is r-coloured there exists a monochromatic line for n large. Given a line l, the set of active coordinates of l is the set of those coordinates that are allowed to vary. In this talk I will consider the following question: given r, what is the smallest number t so that for any r-colouring of [3]^n (n large) there exists a monochromatic line whose active set of coordinates is an union of at most t intervals.
– 12:40-14:00:
Lunch Break
– 14:10-14:40:
Multiply-Charged Vortices in Nonconservative Quantum Hydrodynamics. -Sam Alperin (damtp).
It is well understood that in quantum fluidic systems, rotational flows are restricted to quantized vortex singularities. However, despite being predicted to have extraordinary scientific and technological potential, due to dynamical instabilities, quantized vortices of higher-than-unit topological charge have remained elusive. Here, I show that the steady-state fluxes inherent to nonconservative quantum fluids allow for the spontaneous formation of stable quantum vortices of high topological charge.
– 14:50-15:20:
Locomotion: from basilisk lizards to bacteria. -Maria Tatulea-Codrean (damtp).
Swimming, flying, crawling, hopping, gliding, ballooning, cartwheeling… the list could go on. Nature displays an astonishing diversity when it comes to locomotion. In this talk, I will give some examples of interesting locomotion starting from the animal kingdom and ending with the swimming of bacteria, which is the topic of my research. Along the way, I will highlight the role of physics and mathematics in understanding locomotion, and I will refer to some recent research done on this topic.
– 15:30-16:00:
The importance of Diophantine equations in the Standard Model. -Philip Boyle-Smith (damtp).
Charges of particles have to be integers. A careful study reveals that for quantum field theory to be consistent, these charges must obey certain sets of polynomial equations. We’ll look at how this plays out beautifully in the Standard Model, and at appearances of discrete mathematics in other related contexts.
– 16:10-16:40:
‘Bubble Sucking Tadpoles and other Animals: Using Mathematical Models to
Explain Biological Phenomena’ – George Fortune (damtp)
All across the natural world, organisms perform strange behaviours in
order to help them survive in their chosen ecological niche. In this
talk, I will chose a couple of such behaviours and discuss the
mathematics behind these phenomena. Through constructing simple reduced
mathematical models, we are not only able to bring to the surface the
key underlying physics but also explain a myrid of experimental
observations.

The fluid-mechanics of CO2 sequestration – Prof. John Lister (DAMTP)

Leave a reply
It’s been quite a while since our last talk – apologies from the committee! We’re back with an exciting one from Professor John Lister – details below.
Date and time: Monday 24th February, 8:30PM
Location: Winstanley Lecture Theatre, Trinity College
Professor John Lister (DAMTP) – The fluid-mechanics of CO2 sequestration
Abstract: Atmospheric CO2 levels are rising rapidly due to anthropogenic emissions. One proposal to reduce emissions and mitigate climate change is to capture and compress the CO2 before emission, and pump it underground into deep porous rock formations such as old oil reservoirs. What happens next? Is this safe? I will describe some mathematical modelling of the resultant porous flows and illustrate the ideas with movies of
analogue laboratory experiments and numerical simulations.

Using maths to clean-up our oceans – Dr Thomas Crawford

Leave a reply
Using maths to clean-up our oceans
Dr Thomas Crawford
Monday 20th Jan, 8:30PM, Winstanley Lecture Theatre

This talk will provide a more in-depth look at the content of the Numberphile video: where does river water go?<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mGh0r3zC6Y> Rivers are the major source of pollution in the oceans and if we are to clean them up, we first need to know
where the majority of the pollution is concentrated. By creating a mathematical model for river outflows –- verified by laboratory experiments and fieldwork –- the goal is to be able to predict which areas are most susceptible to pollution from rivers and thus coordinate clean-up
operations as effectively as possible.

Some elements of algebraic geometry – Professor Caucher Birkar (DPMMS)

Leave a reply

Time update: this will start at 5:30PM. This will now be in the CMS, MR2.

Monday 2nd December, 5:30PM

Some elements of algebraic geometry
Professor Caucher Birkar (DPMMS)

Algebraic geometry occupies a central place in modern mathematics. It has deep connections with various parts of mathematics. It is also deeply related to mathematical physics and has found applications in a wide range of topics. In this talk I will introduce some basics of algebraic geometry and then discuss some applications.

TMS Call My Bluff

Leave a reply

Monday 25th November, 8:30PM
TMS Call My Bluff
You?

An annual tradition, held by the TMS, in which a team of freshers test their lying capabilities against a team of other students in a reconstruction of the cult British TV show.