Title: Symmetries and telling all these curves apart
Speaker: Dylan Wilson
Speaker Info:
Brief Description:
Special Note:
Abstract:
If you throw a triangle across the room it's still the same triangle. You learned how to keep track of that in school with such acronyms as "ASA" and "AAS" and "SSS". You probably also learned about conic sections and the different sorts there were and how to tell which one you had in your hand. In this talk, we'll discuss a more systematic method for keeping track of all this stuff called "invariant theory". It has inspired all sorts of interesting things that kept mathematicians busy for about 200 years. We'll see what we can do in 50 minutes.Date: Friday, October 14, 2016