December 2015 Newsletter Mathematics and Statistics

Looking Back at 2015 Well done, everyone, for another excellent year. We have had a number of great successes in teaching and research. The School has seen an increase in student numbers, the arrival of many new postgraduate students, and the opening up of some exciting new research areas. I hope you all have a well-earned break over Christmas and the New Year, and can spend time with your families and friends. I am looking forward to the year ahead.

- Jennifer Brown

UC Innovation Medal Presentation Congratulations to Rick Beatson who was presented with his UC Innovation Medal by the Chancellor, John Wood, at an awards dinner on 20 November.

Worsley Early Career Research Award

Congratulations to Blair Robertson who was awarded the Worsley Early Career Research Award at the NZSA conference in Christchurch on 24 November. Well done, Blair! (Conference details on page 2.)

2015 School Prizewinners Congratulations to the following:

Peter Bryant Memorial Prize (100 level): Melody Zhu

Peter Bryant Memorial Prize (200 level): Liz McGeorge

Gordon Petersen Memorial Prize (200 level): Matt Gordon

Page Memorial Prize (300 level): Aaron Stockdill

Cook Memorial Prize (400 level): Louis Warren

Helen Wily Memorial Prize (300-400 level): Grace Davison

Season’s Greetings and a Happy New Year!

Conferences and Visits Paul Cordue: 39

th Australasian Conference on Combinatorial Mathematics and Combinatorial Computing, University of

Queensland, Brisbane, 6 – 12 December 2015. Daniel Gerhard: Eco-Stats 15 Conference, University of NSW, Sydney, 7 – 10 December 2015.

Maarten McKubre-Jordens: Marsden travel to cover Maarten and invited speakers (Bridges and Schwitchenberg),

Frontiers of Non-Classicality Conference hosted by Maarten, Auckland, 26-29 January 2016. Jeanette McLeod: 39

th Australasian Conference on Combinatorial Mathematics and Combinatorial Computing, University

of Queensland, 6 – 12 December 2015. Rua Murray: Continuation Methods Workshop, University of Auckland, 18 – 19 January 2016.

Gunter Steinke: SCD016 (Symmetries and Covers of Discrete Objects), Queenstown, 14 – 19 February 2016.

Maojun Wang: Eco-Stats 15 Conference, University of NSW, Sydney, 7 – 10 December 2015.

NZSA Conference The 2015 Joint NZSA+ORSNZ Conference took place on 24-26 November in Christchurch, hosted by the University of Canterbury. There were over 100 participants from all over New Zealand, many of them students, with many excellent talks on a wide variety of applied and theoretical topics. The Conference Dinner with Christchurch post-earthquake cuisine (aka food trucks) in Staff Club grounds proved to be a huge success. - Elena Moltchanova

Photo L to R: Postgrad participant Maojun and presenters Abi, Isuru and Yan

Photo Photo L to R: PG Participant Maojun with presenters Abi, Isuru and Yan.

NZ Mathematical Society Colloquium 2015 The School hosted the 50th NZMS Colloquium from November 30 – December 3. This year’s event was the first standalone colloquium on a university campus since 2012 and was opened by Prof. Jan Evans-Freeman. Approximately 80 NZ-based mathematicians and postgraduate students attended, and were joined on Tuesday by 20 local high school teachers for an education afternoon. Invited lectures were given by Rick Beatson (UC), Adam Day (VUW), Ian Frigaard (UBC), Catherine Greenhill (UNSW) and Claire Postlethwaite (UoA). Rick held the honour of being the NZMS Colloquium Lecturer, and Claire was the ANZIAM speaker. Adam Day was the inaugural Butcher-Kalman lecturer, and was introduced by John Butcher himself. The organising committee was: Rick, Brendan, Hannes, Maarten, Jeanette, Rua, Charles and Phil. Penny was supremely helpful with finances throughout the entire year, and Helen, Paul and Pauline calmly handled a number of last-minute jobs. Thanks to everyone. - Rua Murray

Raaz Sainudiin with BLS

Prakasa Rao and Estate

Khmaladze at the 5th

Wellington Workshop on

Probability and Mathematical

Statistics, 19-20 November

2015. Those with sharp

eyesight will also spot Peter

Smith on the stairs.

Papers Submitted Cleary, S., Fischer, M., Griffiths, R.C. & Sainudiin, R.: Some Distributions on Finite Rooted Binary Trees, Research Report

UCDMS2015/2, 16 pages, 2015. Sainudiin, R., & Welch, D.: The Transmission Process: a Combinatorial Stochastic Process on Binary Trees over the Contact Network of Hosts in an Epidemic, Research Report UCDMS2015/4, 28 pages, 2015.

Sainudiin, R., & Veber, A.: A Beta-Splitting Model for Evolutionary Trees, Research Report UCDMS2015/3, 20 pages 2015

Papers Accepted Watson, N.A.: The two versions of the Dirichlet problem for the heat equation, New Zealand Journal of Mathematics.

At the annual postgraduate conference held last month in Taupo, Duy Ho won the prize for best Pure Maths talk, Timm Treskatis won the prize for the best Applied Maths talk, and Lisa Hall got honorable mention for her Stats talk. Congratulations, Duy, Timm and Lisa!

2015 Postgraduate Conference Success

Elephant Delta Conference Photo: Hilary Seddon and Liz Ackerley soaking up the South African sunshine at the 2015 Elephant Delta Conference in November at Port Elizabeth, South Africa. These Southern Hemisphere Conferences on the Teaching and Learning of Undergraduate Mathematics and Statistics have been taking place, under varying names, since 1997 in South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and Argentina. Otherwise known as Delta conferences, the theme of the 2015 and tenth conference was “Think Big!”

Visitor University Host From To Room Extn

Kim Plofker Union College NY C Montelle 7/9/15 17/12/15 714 7687

Marta Casanellas Rius Barcelona M Steel 8/9/15 6/12/15 616 8876

Simone Linz Auckland C Semple 30/11/15 4/12/15 605 8028

Luc Devroye McGill R Sainudiin 13/12/15 31/12/15 607 8875

School Visitors

Academic Promotions Congratulations to the following staff who have been successful in the latest round of promotions:

Associate Professors: Elena Moltchanova, Rua Murray, Michael Plank and Carl Scarrott. Senior Lecturer: Jeanette McLeod.

Discovering De Jong Exhibition Discovering De Jong is a new exhibition in the Puaka-James Hight Library that has been co-ordinated by Clemency Montelle and Joanna Condon (MacMillan Brown Library). It showcases items from the private research library of the late Professor Jan Willem De Jong, a distinguished professor in Buddhist Studies who travelled all over Asia amassing a fascinating collection of rare books, manuscripts and scholarly correspondence. The exhibition, which opened on 27 November, runs to 13 December in conjunction with the 21

st Biannual New Zealand Asian Studies Conference held at UC.

The School's summer project programme is off to a good start this year. We have 20 summer students in all (12 in the School's programme and 8 on UC summer scholarships), and 15 academics supervising projects. On Tuesday November 24

th, we officially opened the School's summer programme with an introductory session for

students (jointly run by Jeanette, John and John Arnold) followed by afternoon tea for students and supervisors. The students are based in Erskine 443 and 437, so please make them feel welcome over the summer. A big thank you to everyone taking part in the programme this year, it's great to see so many students engaged in mathematics and statistics over the summer. - Jeanette McLeod

Summer Students

Another Mathematician? Congratulations to Hannes, Sarah and Ella Diener on the birth last month of Oliver Patrick Diener.

Erskine Singers The Erskine Singers, directed by Jan Evans-Freeman, presented a concert on 27 November. In addition to items from the full choir, the performance included the flower duet from “Lakme” by Delibes, sung by Clemency Montelle and Jan, and organ solos from Tim Bell.

News from the Library Library Liaison Officer for Mathematics and Statistics, Assoc. Prof. Marco Reale http://bit.ly/1zwYHKa

New titles for Mathematics and Statistics http://bit.ly/NVj1hV; for Mathematical Statistics http://bit.ly/MIS2WA; new-titles-list generator http://bit.ly/1brTI3E

Article Processing Charges:Funding Availability http://canterbury.libguides.com/scholarly/OA From the Web:

1. More Students Earning Statistics Degrees, But Not Enough to Meet Surging Demand for Statisticians (American Statistical Association) http://bit.ly/1YSwTgw

2. Mathematicians Find ‘Magic Key’ to Drive Ramanujan’s Taxi-cab Number (eScienceCommons, Emory U) http://bit.ly/1GdGRCQ

3. The Biggest Mystery in Mathematics: Shinichi Mochizuki and the Impenetrable Proof (Nature News & Comment) http://bit.ly/1OsB9Qk

4. That Time Terrence Tao Won $500 from Paul Erdős (Blog on Math Blogs) http://bit.ly/1PMcEef 5. A Number of Mathematicians (3quarksdaily) http://bit.ly/1ZwjhaX 6. Check out Chalkdust! (plus maths) http://bit.ly/1LiXI6j 7. How to Build a Search Engine for Mathematics [Sloane’s Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences] (Nautilus) http://bit.ly/1k5Pbug 8. Khan Academy in Your Pocket — New Apps Available for iPhone and now Android! http://bit.ly/1MEAojX 9. Blogging in Math Class: A Q&A with Casey Douglas (Blog on Math Blogs) http://bit.ly/1RTd8AI 10. Marsden Fund: Benefits Quantified for First Time (Sciblogs) http://bit.ly/1FJDFyX 11. Where Our Science Investment Is Going (Sciblogs) http://bit.ly/1LcOJQU 12. Public Policy at the Limits of Science (JSTOR Daily) http://bit.ly/1FTMFBD 13. Trans-Pacific Partnership: Intellectual-Property – Fact Sheet (MFAT; PDF) http://bit.ly/1QbLsWw 14. Wikileaks Release of TPP Deal Text Stokes ‘Freedom of Expression’ Fears (The Guardian) http://bit.ly/1Zw9uSg 15. Survey: What Do Authors Expect from Peer Review? (The Scholarly Kitchen) http://bit.ly/1MffWmC 16. Checking Our Library Privilege (Inside Higher Ed) http://bit.ly/1S75RgI 17. How PowerPoint Is Killing Critical Thought (The Guardian) http://bit.ly/1KZmbyL 18. Raiders of the Lost Web [the web’s ephemerality] (The Atlantic) http://theatln.tc/1hMcyHL 19. Another Big Win for Google Books (and for Researchers) (The Scholarly Kitchen) http://bit.ly/1PBfSnY 20. The Plot Twist: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far from Dead (NY Times) http://nyti.ms/1YEACOF 21. Will Digital Books Ever Replace Print? (Aeon) http://bit.ly/1JNvj47

And on the lighter side...

Counting to Five Is Harder Than You Think (Math with Bad Drawings) http://bit.ly/1VSOhTh

Academics Don’t Read (PHD Comics) http://bit.ly/1h8ujkm John Arnold | Mathematics/Statistics Liaison Librarian