Past Events

In joint work with Ron Graham and Sam Spiro we study a simple card guessing game where the optimal strategy is elusive. There are 'obvious' greedy strategies (guess the card which is most likely to show up next) which, while not bad, are certainly not optimal. We have upper and lower bounds, and…

Abstract: For model-free reinforcement learning, the main difficulty of stochastic Bellman residual minimization is the double sampling problem, i.e., while only one single sample for the next state is available in the model-free setting, two independent samples for the next state are…

In this talk, I will explain our recent proof of the mean-convex neighborhood conjecture for the mean curvature flow of surfaces. Namely, if the flow develops a neck-singularity, then it is mean-convex in a space-time neighborhood. The major difficulty is to promote the infinitesimal information…

In this talk we will introduce the postulates of quantum mechanics, do a few examples, and discuss their shortcomings. Of note, we will quickly overview the infinite well, free particle, and harmonic oscillator. If time allows, general spectral theory and rigged Hilbert spaces will be included…

Abstract

The analytic class number formula relates the class number of a number field to the residue of a corresponding L-function. Dirichlet's original proof used the language of binary quadratic forms and a *beautiful* averaging argument. We'll define all of these things and look at Dirichlet's proof…

We consider the general problem of enumerating branched covers of the projective line from a fixed general curve subject to ramification conditions at possibly moving points. Our main computations are in genus 1; the theory of limit linear series allows one to reduce to this case. We first…