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September 2014
Ravi Vakil, Stanford University
Doodling has many mathematical aspects: patterns, shapes, numbers, and more. Not surprisingly, there is often some sophisticated and fun mathematics buried inside common doodles. Dr.…
Find out more »February 2017
Bernd Sturmfels, University of California, Berkeley
Beyond Linear Algebra Linear algebra is the foundation of scientific computing and its numerous applications. Yet, the world is nonlinear. In this lecture we argue…
Find out more »May 2017
Kannan Soundararajan: Primes Fall for the Gambler’s Fallacy
The gambler's fallacy is the erroneous belief that if (for example) a coin comes up heads often, then in the next toss it is more likely to be tails. In Soundararajan's recent work with Robert Lemke Oliver, they found that funnily enough, the primes exhibit a kind of gambler's fallacy: for example, consecutive primes do not like to have the same last digit. Dr. Soundararajan will show some of the data on this, and explain what their research leads them to believe is happening.
Find out more »September 2017
Alessandro Chiesa: Bitcoin, Its Privacy Problem and How to Fix It
Professor Chiesa will discuss the bitcoin privacy problem and how to fix it. He will introduce the main algorithmic ideas behind Bitcoin, the first decentralized crypto-currency to gain significant public trust and adoption.
He will further explain one of Bitcoin's main limitations: its lack of privacy due to the fact that every payment is broadcast in plaintext. And he will conclude his discussion by explaining how to solve this problem with a beautiful cryptographic tool, zero knowledge proofs. This solution was recently deployed in the wild, as part of the cryptocurrency Zcash.
Find out more »May 2018
Krzysztof Burdzy: The least interesting philosophical theory of probability ever (but at least it makes sense)
The least interesting philosophical theory of probability ever (but at least it makes sense) I will present a new way to look at the scientific…
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DIVINE BODIES Presents: The Purna Lokha Quartet
DIVINE BODIES Presents: The Purna Lokha Quartet Saturday, May 19, 2018 from 1:30 - 3:00 PM Asian Art Museum: Samsung Hall 200 Larkin St, San Francisco,…
Find out more »September 2018
Moon Duchin: Random Walks and Gerrymandering
Random Walks and Gerrymandering Markov chain Monte Carlo, or MCMC, is a powerful family of search algorithms that has applications all over science and engineering. …
Find out more »May 2019
Stuart Bale: The Sun’s “Dark Energy” Problem
Dr. Stuart Bale spoke to MSRI's Math Lovers Forum in May 2019. Dr. Bale explained some of what we’ve learned about the sun’s structure and…
Find out more »November 2019
David Eisenbud: “How to Factorize (Almost) Everything” and Jack McCauley
This November 2019 event featured two presentations. How to Factorize (Almost) Everything MSRI director and UC Berkeley Professor of Mathematics David Eisenbud recalls that most of…
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