 |
Yellow Pig Math Days |
a conference celebrating 34 years of
|
partially sponsored by 
OverviewYellow Pig Math Days took place on the Hampshire Campus (of course) with activities held in Franklin Patterson Hall and Adele Simmons Hall. Alumn participants stayed in Merrill C, the HCSSiM dorm of the '70's and '80's, and HCSSiM 2006 participants stayed in their Prescott rooms. Classes and problem sessions were held as usual during YPMD, with the exceptions that classes ended early so HCSSiM 2006 could attend YPMD talks and that there were more alumn visitors in classes and problem sessions than usual. A room in Merrill C was devoted to making and restoring Yellow Pig T-shirts and portions of the Yellow Pig Collection and 17 Board were on exhibit in the Johnson Library Gallery throughout the weekend. All plenary talks and many other talks and events were videotaped for posterity. Photos taken by participants are available here and here. |
Schedule
Friday, July 14
Registration in the Lobby of Adele Simmons Hall
17:00 Prime Time Theorem: Kelly with Sex and the Single Statistician
6:00 Supper in the Dining Commons
7:34 - 10:34 Problem Sessions in ASH classrooms and Reception in ASH Lobby
Saturday, July 15
Registration in the Lobby of Franklin Patterson Hall
10:00 Welcome and Opening Address: Jim Propp (University of Wisconsin-Madison) spoke on Removing randomness with rotor-routers
11:17 - 11:51 Julius Su (Caltech), Optimal Strategies for the Game "Battleship" (and their use to discover new drugs).
12:00 - 12:34 Dan Ullman (George Washington University), Mathematics and Politics
12:30 Lunch
1:30 Plenary Talk: Susan Landau (Sun Microsystems) spoke on The Square Root of 2 plus the The Square Root of 3: Four Different Views
3:00 Gallery Opening: YP17 - The Exhibit, The Yellow Pig Collection, The 17 Board, and Reception with flowers, doughnuts, and cider
5:00 Prime Time Theorems
Benji Fisher (Boston College), Crystallography: Wasn't that settled like 102 years ago?
Neil Immerman (University of Massachusetts-Amherst), Descriptive Complexity
6:00 Supper in the Dining Commons
8:17 Math Movies: Canon, Four-Line Conics, HCSSiM's own Rolling
Polygons, HCSSiM's own The Kakeya Problem, The Hypercube, and Dance Squared
Followed by an impromptu explanation by Rob Lipschutz of the technology used
to make The Kakeya Problem
9:17 Danny Loeb (SIG), Cinemath: mathematics in The Wizard of Oz, Diehard with a Vengeance, A Beautiful Mind, The Mirror Has Two Faces, and Little Big League
Sunday, July 16 - Yellow Pigs Eve
10:00 Plenary Talk: Dana Randall (Georgia Tech) spoke on Finding a random needle in a combinatorial haystack
11:17 Greg Sorkin (IBM Watson Center), The Polya-Eggenberger "rich get richer" urn model (featuring a super-slick analysis).
11:51 Talks
Wei-Jing Zhu (TwoSigma), 17 Entanglements around Spin 1/2
Judy Miller (Georgetown University), How Can You Tell if Natural Selection is Working?
12:30 Lunch
1:00 - 4:00 Swimming in the Robert Crown Center
1:30 Plenary Talk: Erik Winfree (Caltech) spoke on Tiling and Self-Assembly
2:34 Group Photos
3:00 - 5:00 YP17 - The Exhibit
3:00 - 3:34 Talks
Judy Goldsmith (University of Kentucky), What's a nice YP like you doing, studying welfare?
Ira Matetsky (Ganshore), on How he ended up in law
Larry Carter (University of California-San Diego), on his three careers
3:51 - 5:00 Panel: Math in Industry, including Naomi Baline Kleinman, Robert Lipshutz (Affymetrix), Danny Loeb, David desJardins
6:00 Alumn Banquet (Red Barn)
8:17 Plenary Talk: Kelly does The Mathematical and Social History of 17
10:00 Carols and Cake
Monday, July 17 YELLOW PIGS DAY
9:00 Continental Breakfast (FPH Lobby)
10:00 Plenary Talk: Eric Lander (Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard) spoke on The Human Genome, Including Chromosome 17
11:17 Your Presentations, Your Performances, and Your Proofs: an unmoderated sequence of pictures, short proofs, recollections, memorabilia, seen 17s, and amusing (at the time or now) anecdotes
12:30 Lunch
1:34 Talks
Russ Lyons (Indiana University) Random Walks, Groups, and Graphs
Alan Edelman (MIT), Random Matrix Theory: Why all the fuss?
Larry Ausubel (University of Maryland), Efficient Auctions for Multiple Items
2:34 Jim Propp led Choreographic Topology in the Lobby of FPH
3:00 - 5:00 YP17 - The Exhibit
5:00 Prime Time Theorems
PJ Karafiol (Walter Peyton College Prep), New Ways to Visualize Complex Math Using Software Everyone (Should) Already Have
The Alumn Reminiscences session became a discussion on the future of HCSSiM
6:00 Supper
7:34 - 10:34 Problem Sessions
