On January 31st the Department of Mathematics welcomed 18 Grade 11 and 12 students to participate in a Mentorship program with our Graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.
So far the topics covered have been far ranging and of various interests. A sampling of topics:
- Optimal Transport
- Topics in abstract algebra starting with some basic groups and rings theory building to some notions of geometry (e.g., projective spaces and affine varieties over complex numbers) with the ultimate goal to learn the intuition behind blowing-up and resolution of singularities, and producing graphs or animations of simple resolutions of curve singularities
- Issues in the foundations of mathematics such as the difference between countable and uncountable sets, and “constructing” most of the basic mathematical objects (the integers, rational numbers, real numbers, complex numbers) starting from just the empty set
- Number theory starting from the basics of congruences, Little Fermat Theorem, Euler function, Integer points inside polygons and ellipses and some other relatively elementary theorems
- Calculus of Young tableaux with applications to combinatorics and symmetric polynomials
… and much more.
We are looking forward to seeing their poster presentations in April on the fascinating mathematics they have learned.