Hi everyone,
Dan Spielman is a super awesome computer scientist and on Friday he will talk about an area close to my heart (spectral graph theory). The talk should be very accessible and super cool. This is a great example of how beautiful mathematical concepts manifest themselves in the design of algorithms.
2:30 pm MathAcrossCampus Talk
Kane 110
Introduction by Ioana Dumitriu
Reception 3:30-4:30
Title: Physical metaphors for graphs and networks.
Abstract:
We will show how physical metaphors can help us understand the
structure of a graph. The graphs arising in different disciplines can
have very different characteristics: social networks, protein-protein
interactions networks, road networks, and scientific meshes are all
graphs. But, they can look very different from each other. This diversity
makes it difficult to understand arbitrary graphs.
We will explore an approach to understanding graphs that has been
unreasonably successful: imagining that a graph represents a phyisical
object. For example, we may pretend that the edges of a graph are
springs, rubber bands, or resistors. Linear algebraic techniques
for understanding these physical systems naturally lead to the
development of spectral and algebraic graph theory. We will survey
some of the fundamental ideas from these fields.
May 7, 2014
