Here is a list of talks and relevant links given in years past.

Spring 2003 Schedule:

Organizer: Heather Lehr

• February 1, 2003: Location: RLM 4.102, Speaker: Dr. Lorenzo Sadun, Topic: Continued Fractions
  

  For more information about continued fractions, visit An Introduction to Continued Fractions (a very comprehensive and fun site!), Pianos and Continued Fractions, or Chaos in Numberland: The secret life of continued fractions (another very good site with interesting applications). 
   
   

• February 22, 2003: Location: PAI (Painter Hall) 3.02, Speaker: Dr. Bruce Palka, Topic: Dido's Problem



• March 22, 2003: Location: RLM 4.102, Speaker: Dr. Fernanado Rodriguez-Villegas, Topic: Nimmity, Nimmity, Nimmity: More Mathematical Games


 
• April 12, 2003: Location: RLM 4.102, Speaker: Dr. Kathy Davis, Topic: "Digital Music"

• September 14, 2002: RLM 4.102: Dr. Michael Starbird, "INFINITY: How to Count When You Run Out of Toes"

  For more information about infinity, visit Ask Dr. Math or Hotel Infinity. 
   
   

• October 12, 2002: RLM 4.102: Dr. Chaim Goodman-Strauss (the original founder of SMMG along with Karen Uhlenbeck), "Up to 1,000,000 Dollars in Prize Money Will Be Given Away!" (see the poster)

  For more information on Game Theory, visit Clever Games for Clever People, The Game of Life, Another explanation of the Game of Life, and Gametheory.net for lots of games, links, resources, and more on game theory.




• November 16, 2002: RLM 4.102: Dr. Felipe Voloch, "Barcodes!"

  For more information on Barcodes and related topics, visit Dr. Voloch's barcode page, Clocks and Modular Arithmetic Discussion, Math Alive Modular Arithmetic, and info on Casting Out Nines.
  
   

• December 14, 2002:RLM 4.102: Dr. Vrej Zarikian: "Infinite Sums"

• February 2, 2002:

  RLM 4.102: Dr. Lorenzo Sadun, "Folding Polyhedra: Geometry through Origami" For more information about geometry and origami, visit The Geometry Junkyard and Origami on the Web. Here are a few photos from this talk.

• February 23, 2002: RLM 4.102: Dr. James Vick, "Topology and Euler Number"
  
  Visit the Topological Zoo to learn more about topology.
  
  
• April 13, 2002: RLM 4.102: Dr. Barry Cipra, "Mathematical Anti-Chairs and Other Thoughtful Fun"
  
  
  
• May 4, 2002: RLM 4.102: Kirsten Boyd: "Space Shuttles and Manhole Covers"
  
  
  

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  Fall 2001 Schedule:
  
  Organizer: Melissa Macasieb
  
  
  • September 15, 2001: RLM 4.102: Dr. Michael Starbird, "Cool Geometry: Ice Cream Cones, Pies, and Snowballs"
    
    
    
  • October 27, 2001: PAI 3.02: Dr. Michael Marder, "Maps and Chaos"
    
    To find out more about chaos and dynamical systems, visit this website used in the presentation.
    
    
  • November 17, 2001: RLM 4.102: Dr. Susan Hammond Marshall, "What do doughnuts have to do with numbers and geometry?"
    
    
    
  • December 8, 2001: RLM 4.102: Dr. Cynthia Verjovsky Marcotte, "The Seven Bridges of Konigsberg"
    
    Visit this website to lean more about this famous mathematical problem.
    
    Here are some more photos from this talk.

  
  

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  Spring 2001 Schedule: NOTE NEW LOCATION FOR THE SPRING!! All talks this semester will be held in T.S. Painter Hall.
  Organizer: Katherine Socha. <>
  • January 20, 2001:

    PAI 3.02: Dr. Martin Golubitsky, "Symmetry, Patterns, and Animal Gaits." Here are a few photos from this talk.

  • February 17, 2001: PAI 3.02: Dr. Cynthia Marcotte, "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways!"
    
    
  • March 3, 2001: PAI 3.02: Dr. Frank Shirley, "The Mathematics of Melody." This special presentation is part of the Explore UT program. TIME CHANGE: SMMG meets 2:00-4:00 today!
    
    
  • April 7, 2001: PAI 3.02: Dr. Stathis Tompaidis of the McCombs School of Business at UT. "Modern Portfolio Theory: The Mathematics Behind Choosing a Stock Portfolio."
    
    
  • April 28, 2001: PAI 3.02: Dr. Henrietta Edmonds, "Putting the Ocean in a Box: Simple Numerical Models in Oceanography."
    

  Fall 2000 Schedule:

  Organizer: Katherine Socha. <>
  • September 9:

    Before

    RLM 4.102: Dr. Michael Starbird, "Doughnuts, Dogbones and Topology." For more topology, visit The Topological Zoo. Here are more photos from this talk, including the (in)famous "Dropping Trousers."

    After

  • September 23:

    RLM 4.102: Dr. Linda Hayes, "Downhill Racer! The Mathematics of Motion." Here are some photos from this presentation and the associated activities.

  • October 21:

    RLM 4.102: Dr. Thomas Leih, BAE SYSTEMS,"How to Find a Submarine." We played Marco-Polo-Bingo! Visit the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration home page. Here are more photos from this talk.

  • November 18:

    RLM 4.102: Dr. Patrick Callahan, "From Monsters to Bells: an Introduction to Group Theory." Visit the North American Guild of Change Ringers for information about change ringing! More information about extants and peals may be found at the Visual Method Archive. Here are some photos from this presentation and the associated activities.

  
  

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  Spring 2000 Schedule:

  Organizer: Leslie Hayes. <>
  • February 5, RLM 4.102: Dr. Bruce Palka, "Dido's Problem. What does a legendary Phoenecian princess have to do with mathematics?"
    
    For a three dimensional Pentomino sort of puzzle, check out this Soma Cube site.
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  • March 4, RLM 4.102: Dr. Chaim Goodman Strauss, "Can't Decide? Undecide!!"
    
    Some excellent, readable sources are:
    anything by Douglas Hofstader, but mostly Godel-Escher-Bach
    or anything by Raymond Smullyan
    
    
  <>
  • March 25, RLM 4.102: Dr. Felipe Voloch, "BIG Primes"
    
    Here's the site for the Prime Pages Dr. Voloch mentioned on Saturday. (You can get more information about GIMPS here)
    
    
    
  <>
  • April 15, RLM 4.102: Dr. Hugh Howards, "Knots from a Mathematical Perspective"
    
    Here's some information about Knot Theory
    
    Check out the KnotPlot site for some great images of knots.
    
    A wonderful book about knots is "The Knot Book" by Colin Adams.
    
    
  
  

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  Fall 1999 Schedule:

  Organizer: Leslie Hayes. <>
  • September 18, RLM 4.102: Dr. Patrick Callahan, "Math in the Bath: The Geometry of Soap Bubbles".
    
    Click here for an interesting site with more information on bubbles.
    
  • October 16, RLM 4.102: Dr. Terutake Abe, "On Numbers and Games: How Familiar and Exotic Numbers Arise out of Games".
    
    If you are interested in more games like we played during the activity session, here are a couple of sites:
    
    Clever games for Clever People. Here you'll find a collection of rules and illustrations of games.
    
    Mathematical Games, Toys and Puzzles. There are lots of links here, including many more games, and research reports.
    
    A good book to look for is Winning Ways, volumes 1 and 2 by Berlekamp, Conway and Guy, Academic Press, 1982. This book is full of pictures, cute quotations, and wordplays.
    
    
  • October 30, RLM 4.102: Dr. Linda Henderson, "Modern Art and the Fourth Dimension"
    
    Click here to explore 2-dimensional space!
    
  • November 20, RLM 4.102: Dr. Irene Gamba, "Modeling and Computing"
    
    

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  Spring 1999 Schedule:

  Organizer: Cynthia Verjovsky Marcotte. <>
  • March 6, RLM 4.102: Dr. Patrick Callahan, "From paperfolding to coffee cup caustics: The Geometry of Curves".
    
    ***This will be in the afternoon, just this once*** This time, SMMG will be part of UT Interactive, a campus-wide open house.
    The talk will be repeated at three different times: 12:30 - 1:45 pm 2:00 - 3:15 pm 3:30 - 4:45 pm The place will be the same as always: RLM 4.102.
    
  • March 27, RLM 4.102: Drs. Nicholas Ormes & Debra Carney, "Fractals: In between dimensions"
    
    There are many sites on the web where you can learn about fractals and fractal dimension. You can explore such things as:
    Hilbert's Curve, Koch's Snowflake, Sierpinski's Triangle and Sierpinski's Carpet (also called Sierpinski's Gasket).
    
    You can find fractal dimensions of many fractals at the this site, by determining the scale factor and the number of copies used to create the next level of iteration.
    
    You can play some games that are related to fractals. You can play The Chaos Game. Two others are Fractalina, and Franimate created by Noah Goodman, who is now a graduate student here at UT!
    
    Another good page to try is the Center for Polymer Studies, which includes several Fractals in Science Java applets.
  • April 24, RLM 4.102: Dr. Fernando Rodriguez-Villegas, "Nimbles for a nimble Nim: The mathematics of games"
    
    If you want to learn about some of Conway's other games, go to the Clever Games for Clever People site. This includes all the games we played during the activity.
  • May 8, RLM 4.102: Dr. Margaret Symington, "Catastrophes: Will the dog attack?"
  
  

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  Fall 1998 Schedule:

  Organizer: Cynthia Verjovsky Marcotte. <>
  • September 19, RLM 4.102: Dr. Michael Starbird, "The Fourth Dimension".
    
    Saket Vora told us about a related site, Hypercube, which has links to other sites. Thanks, Saket! If you want to find out more about Prof. Thomas Banchoff, one of the creators of the video "Hypercube: Projections and Slicing" which was shown at this session, visit his web page.
  • October 10, RLM 4.102: Dr. Lorenzo Sadun, "Tilings, Quasi-Crystals and Continuous Symmetry."
    
    A cool site where you learn about tilings, both periodic and non periodic, is the one run by the Geometry Center. You also down load some software to create your own non periodic tilings. A great site expalining the 4 plane symmetries and the wallpaper groups is "Symmetry and the Shape of Space." This site was created by Chaim Goodman-Strauss, an old SMMG organizer!

    Another good site is "Wallpaper Groups" by David E. Joyce.

  • October 24, RLM 4.102: Dr. Daniel Bonevac, "Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem."

    You can read about this theorem in the Mathematics Encyclopedia. You can read a quote by Roger Penrose about the implications of this theorem.

    A great book that deals with this and other related topics is Douglas Hofstadter's "Gödel, Escher, Bach." Another book that contains lots of fun puzzles is Raymond Smullyan's "Forever Undecided: A Puzzle Guide to Gödel."

  • November 21, RLM 4.102: Dr. Diane Radin, "The Prisoner's Dilemma."

    Here are some links related to the Prisoner's Dilemma.

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  Spring semester, 1998:

  Organizers: Dana Brunson and Angela Gibney. <>
  • January 31, RLM 4.102: Dr. Ted Odell, "Mathematical Insanity."
  • February 14, ETC 2.108: Dr. Jeff Stopple, "Cryptography... the Black Chamber to the Internet."
  • March 7, RLM 4.102: Dr. Fernando Rodriguez-Villegas, "Lattice Polygons: What's twelve got to do with it?."
  • March 28, RLM 4.102: Dr. Rob Ghrist, "Walking in a 5-Dimensional Room."

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  Fall 1997 Schedule:

  Organizers: Dana Brunson and Angela Gibney. <> <>
  • September 13, RLM 4.102: Dr. Patrick Callahan, " Polyhedra: They're not just for breakfast anymore. A guided tour from Plato to the present." There is a handout for this one. Check out these sites for more information: Virtual polyhedra web page , and A Pavilion of Polyhedrality. Also that day, we'll make Slide-Together polyhedra like the one in the picture on the right. Here is a set of pictures of uniform polyhedra: V. Bulatov's polyhedra.
  • September 27, ECJ 1.202: Dr. Rob Ghrist, "Will the Solar System Collapse? - a mathematical approach."
  • October 18, ECJ 1.202: Dr. Michael Starbird, "Cutting Cake for Greedy People, Topology to the Rescue."
  • November 8, RLM 4.102: Dr. Lorenzo Sadun, "The Shortest Distance Between Two Points."
  • November 22, RLM 4.102: Dr. Charles Radin, " Patterns and Symmetry."

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  Address: Department of Math, UT Austin, 1 University Station C1200, Austin TX 78712
  Phone: 512-475-8764
  Fax: 512-471-9038
  Office: RLM 8.100
  e-mail: smmg@math.utexas.edu

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  Last updated July 24, 2003 by Kathleen Petersen.
  Send questions, comments to Kathleen Petersen at smmg@math.utexas.edu .
  
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