Day 6, Mat194: Mathematical Sciences Seminar

Today:

• Our fourth reading concerned how to fairly distribute the Covid vaccine (and other optimization problems associated with Covid). Our summarizers were
  • Craig McGhee
  • Austin Paolucci
  • Rachel Ritchie
  • Ganga Adhikari

  and their work can be found here, on our wiki.

• For the past two weeks, we've been dealing with the fraught topic of "the disturbing future of AI", as discussed here.

  I enjoyed learning some new things myself about AI from our "local experts". It's good to have folks who actually know something about the subject in our group, who can help to lead us in thinking about the issues.

  As I mentioned in a recent email, please reach out to each other for more info. For example Shawn mentioned an "REU": more of you should look into an REU ("Research Experiences for Undergraduates").

  This week's summarizers were not chosen quite as randomly as I usually do. I looked over the ones who'd only summarized once and this is our group of summarizers of the AI discussion:

  • Madison Goodwin (captain)
  • Caesar Bao
  • Jenna Henderson
  • Liam Painter

  In contrast to previous groups, I'm going to begin appointing a "captain," who will always be the first person listed in the group. I will look to the captain to shepherd this group. You will have to play this role at most once.

  I'm afraid that we seem to be a little rudderless without a captain.

  I'll be sending out an email, putting you all in contact with each other.

• We have an office hour zoom at 9:00 on Wednesdays, if anyone in that group (or anyone else!) needs a hand with anything.

• This week I promised something light, and hopefully fun.

  You'll recall that there is an autobiographical element to the final project. There is also a mathematical aspect to the final project. I want to get us thinking about those two elements. So this week the four questions concern these two aspects of your "mathematical history", and boil down to this:

  1. What is the most beautiful mathematics you have encountered in your life?
  2. Who are your most important mathematical influences?
  Here's the link to our discussion. Get in early before someone steals your idea!:) Please -- no "repeat beauty": if someone has taken "your idea", please find your second favorite, etc.

• We're sticking with the two-phased thing (which is working better -- see Santa's report, below):
  1. Your initial comments are due by Sunday night (2/28).
  2. Then respond to other's comments by Tuesday (3/2) at Midnight.
  Santa notes that we've seen big improvements in the nice/naughty ratio:
  1. 15/17 responded by Sunday; of those, only 3 didn't respond again.
  2. That means 12 nice, and 3 somewhat naughty yet somewhat nice; and two will be getting coal in their stocking.