Math Monday, Applied Math in Baseball, Distinguished Teaching Award, and more

[Berkeley MUSA]

Sup,

Hope I didn't disturb your Sunday late-night burst of productivity. Here are your weekly announcements:

Math Monday: Monday, April 16, 5pm (939 Evans)

Title: Chaos in Dynamical Systems

Speaker: Semyon Dyatlov

Abstract: We will study several mathematical ways to describe when a given dynamical system exhibits chaotic, or unpredictable, behavior, such as the notions of ergodicity and mixing. These concepts will be illustrated on several examples, both basic (where I will attempt to give a rigorous proof of ergodicity) and more interesting ones, such as chaotic billiards (which will be demonstrated by numerical simulations).

Applied Math in Baseball: Thursday, April 19, 6pm (1015 Evans)

David Jackson-Hanen will be speaking on applied mathematics in baseball. He earned his Ph.D. from MIT in Symplectic Topology, and his Bachelor's in Mathematics from Harvard. He currently is a Research Scientist as part of the Oakland Athletics. Pizza will be provided!

Abstract:

I'm planning on focusing on baseball as a sort of "controlled environment" for testing and clarifying economic and statistic ideas, by virtue of it's being at something of a sweet spot between an individual sport like tennis and a sport with complex interactions like football.

With respect to economics, I want to focus on baseball as a (pre)-test case for Gary Becker's economic account of discrimination. The integration of baseball starting with Jackie Robinson in 1947 is of course one of the more famous events in American pop culture history, but taken as a whole it also illustrate both the strength and weakness of competitive markets to undermine unjust discriminatory. If there is time and/or interest I would also go into how baseball sharpens and illustrates questions about how to value the marginal contributions of "workers", in particular the development of the concept of a "replacement level" player.

On the statistical side, it's hardly a secret that many people's introduction to basic statistics was calculating and tracking basic baseball statistics as children. Baseball is often used to illustrate and explain new statistical concepts, such as Carl Morris and Bradley Efron's famous example of the James-Stein paradox in estimating batting averages. More recently, one of the most controversial debates in the history of sabermetrics--the development and use of fielding independent pitching statistics--was ultimately best understood in terms of relatively elementary bayesian notions such as conjugate priors. If there's time there are obviously more examples to explore here.

Distinguished Teaching Award:

Every year, MUSA broadcasts a survey to the undergraduate math community to discern the best math professor for that year. The winner of this award will be announced at the math commencement by Cailan Li, President Emeritus. Please fill out this survey by the Friday of dead week, May 4. We will consider each answer holistically, which means that it's not just the number of nominations each professor gets but the experiences and stories you tell about them. Note that this survey is completely anonymous, and you can only submit it once.

WiM Fireside Chat with Professor Wehrheim: Monday, April 16th, 6-8pm (1015 Evans)

Come to WiM's meeting, to hear Professor Katrin Wehrheim speak and ask them questions about their experiences! Katrin Wehrheim is an associate professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley. Their research centers around symplectic topology and gauge theory. They are known for their work on pseudoholomorphic quilts. With Dusa McDuff, they have challenged the foundational rigor of a classic proof in symplectic geometry. They are also happy to chat about queer life in academia and share their own story!

Data Science Open House: Cal Day

As part of Nexus, a data science student group alliance, we're advertising the Data Science Open House as part of Cal Day. If you are interested in data science, I recommend you check out these events. Here are the links to the open house and the student group panel, at which I may make a special appearance!

Best,

Ryan Shaw

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