[Csdmsemo] New seminar announcement--BYOB at Lunch Working Group

[Kristina Phillips]

Dear All,

Guy Moshkovitz and Daniel Litt are organizing a working group this semester
aimed at discussing elementary problems accessible to a general mathematical
audience, loosely inspired by the Polymath projects. It's called the
BYOP at Lunch Working Group (Bring Your Own Problem).

The idea is to have each week 2-3 problems presented by participants,
followed by a vote on which to discuss, followed by a 45-minute long
discussion. The atmosphere of the working group is meant to be warm, casual,
and friendly.

Meetings will be held on Wednesdays at 12:30pm in the Dilworth room,
starting Wednesday, January 23. Just grab some lunch from the cafeteria and
join.

Please send an email to  <mailto:byoplunch at googlegroups.com>
byoplunch at googlegroups.com if you are interested in attending and would like
to be included in the mailing list.



*Format of the seminar*

If you have a problem you think would be interesting to discuss, please send
it to  <mailto:byoplunch at googlegroups.com> byoplunch at googlegroups.com by
Tuesday, January 22.  Problems should be elementary: that is, understandable
by a broad audience. Any background necessary should fit into a 5-minute
mini-presentation at the blackboard. They should not be difficult open
problems, and need not have a precise statement. The goal need not be to
solve a problem in its entirety; for example, we can focus on an
interesting, concrete special case. And it's alright if you're not an expert
on the problem you are proposing; just do a brief google search to make sure
it's not a famous open problem.

Before each meeting, the organizers will pick two or three of the problems
proposed by email, and their proposers will be asked to prepare a (very
casual) 5-minute presentation of the problem, including necessary background
and motivation. After a quick vote, we will transition to a discussion of
the proposed problem.

If you'd like to propose a problem, please send a 1-2 paragraph email to
<mailto:byoplunch at googlegroups.com> byoplunch at googlegroups.com with an
explanation and motivation, as well as references if they exist. Neither the
email nor the resulting 5 minute presentation needs to be polished.

Sources of problems that might fit the seminar include: self-contained
questions arising from your research, elementary problems you are idly
curious about, attempts to improve an existing short paper/result, attempts
to find a clean proof of existing results with complicated proofs, and the
construction of interesting examples or special cases.

Ultimately, the goal of the seminar is to have a nice chat and discover some
new mathematics -- of course, if a nice paper or two comes out of it, that
would be great.

Hope to see you there,
Guy Moshkovitz and Daniel Litt

 

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