2023 Math/Stats Awards + Scholarships Ceremony

Please join us in celebration of a great year of accomplishment for mathematics students at UMaine!

Wednesday, April 26, Hill Auditorium, Barrows Hall, 3 – 4:30 pm.

With awards presented, and a short mathematical talk by Prof. Brandon Hanson, entitled Oversight committees lead to overworked committee members (see abstract below).

Refreshments will be served immediately following the event. Friends and family are welcome!

 

Abstract for the talk: The old saying goes “a camel is a horse, designed by committee”. And, at UMaine, even the committees need committees. Recently, Justin Gilmer, a machine learning researcher for Google Brain, proved that when the notion of committee oversight is taken to its fullest extent, someone will have to serve on a positive proportion of all committees. In this talk, I’ll explain how Gilmer leveraged the power of Claude Shannon’s theory of information to make a historical breakthrough on a problem that has seen little progress since its formulation almost 50 years ago.