Fall 2006
CONTENTS:
In this issue:
Math Matters: IMA Public LecturesIMA Public Lecture Series; Math Matters lectures feature distinguished mathematicians and scientists who are also superb expositors and are able to illuminate the role mathematics is playing in understanding our world and shaping our lives.Margaret H. Wright delivers the Public lecture series
The final public lecture of the year 2006 How Hard
Can It
Be?, November 2, 2006 was delivered by
Margaret H. Wright, Silver Professor of Computer Science,
Courant
Institute of Mathematical Sciences,
New York University. Margaret was the first woman to speak
these
public lectures. Over 300 people, more than 100 of which were
high
school students attended this inspiring, educational and
entertaining
lecture.
Wright opened her talk by sharing with her audience some amazing examples of "hard" mathematical problems that were turned into easy problems to solve. She emphasized how mathematicians play a role in deciding which problems are hard and are considered to be NP-problems (problems that are easy to check, but hard to solve with our current tools). She showed for example that completing a jigsaw puzzle with n pieces, when n is large is NP. She then turned to a discussion of Cryptography and showed how Diffie and Hellman revolutionized this field by using modular arithmetic and factorization of large primes in number theory. Finally she talked about linear programming and gave a practical example on how eating a good breakfast relates to linear programming and showed how algorithmic improvements in both simplex and interior-point methods, plus faster computers, have enabled us to solve huge linear programs very quickly.
Upcoming Public Lectures
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