GUEST LECTURE
Speaker: Sarah Pingrey,
GWU
Title:
Everyday Encryption
Abstract: The
internet age is defined by information sharing worldwide based on more
people
having access to technology. Technologies
such as encryption
have been important in regulating access to this information
by protecting privacy, property, and principles by whoever chooses to
share
data. Using several examples, I will
describe
how several algorithmic techniques can be used to protect information
in
transit. Beginning with passwords
transmitted with Secure Sockets Layers (SSL), leading to simple Digital
Rights Management
(DRM) which is used to secure DVDs and music, and concluding with more
sophisticated schemes such as watermarking and containers, I will
describe how
encryption has and will become important in our daily lives. Comparatively, I will discuss how encryption
methods reduce the quality and quantity of data in an environment
without
standards especially given the rate of non-encrypted media becoming
obsolete.
GUEST LECTURE
Speaker: Amy
Vanderbilt, Wave Technologies
Title:
Applications of logic in quick
reaction systems
Abstract: Logic plays a
large role
in the automation and performance of quick reaction defense systems. We will discuss several examples of quick
reaction programs that have made significant use of monotonic and nonmonotonic reasoning, how the reasoning
was used and the
benefits gained. A brief background on nonmonotonic reasoning will be given. For projects where nonmonotonic
reasoning was used, we will discuss the reasons behind choosing this
particularly unique reasoning form.
VISIT
TO THE
Turing
exhibit and
breaking the code
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing
http://www.spymuseum.org/see/exhibit_perm.asp#spies
GUEST LECTURE
Speaker: Eric Ufferman,
GWU
Title:
In search of a perfect voting method
Abstract:
I will give an overview of the
problems
and paradoxes that arise in the theory of voting. In
the two-candidate case it is obvious that
the best method is to simply choose the candidate that receives the
most votes.
In the case where three or more
candidates are allowed to run, there is no clear-cut best method. I will list fundamental properties that
ideally we would wish any voting method to satisfy. Together
these properties say that voting “strategically,”
that is, lying about one’s preferences, will never help a voter obtain
a
desired outcome. I will conclude by
giving a statement of theorem
due to Kenneth Arrow, which says that it is
impossible to find a voting method that satisfies all the fundamental
properties.
PAPER
DISCUSSION
“‘I vote this way
because I’m
wrong’ The Supreme Court justice as Epimenides”: by
John M. Rogers, Kentucky Law Journal, volume 79, Number 3, 1990–91,
pages 439–475.
GUEST LECTURE
Speaker: Jennifer Chubb, GWU
Title:
Tractable,
intractable, and NP-complete problems
Abstract:
There are problems that, once
translated
into appropriate mathematical terms, can be solved by a computer and
those that
can't; but establishing that a problem is solvable in this manner is
not the
end of the story. The theory of
computational
complexity attempts to characterize solvable problems by looking
at the resources required to solve them, such as computation time or
computer
memory. Two very well known categories
of problems are called P (for polynomial-time computable) and NP
(for non-deterministic polynomial-time computable). I'll
describe (in an accessible way) the
fundamentals of complexity theory and give some illustrating examples. I will also explain the famous “P versus NP”
question and give some examples of NP-complete
problems.
We
will have P
and NP cookies.
Can you tell the difference?
GUEST LECTURE
Speaker: John Chisholm,
Title:
Mathematics
of fair division algorithms and envy-freeness
Abstract: When Mom gets tired of
the twins fighting over the last piece of cake, she can tell them to
work out a
fair division themselves, using the time-honored method of having one
twin cut
the cake and letting the other twin have first choice among the two
pieces. This method will guarantee a fair
share to each
twin, even when they disagree about the desirability of different parts
of the
cake. But if the cake needs to be
divided among three children, how can they proceed among themselves to
guarantee a fair share for each child? Not
until the twentieth century did mathematicians successfully devise
“fair division”
methods for more than two people, and active research in this field
continues
to make new discoveries. This talk will
present an overview of the mathematics of fair division, including
discussion
of such questions as: What should we mean to say a division is “fair”?
Are
there different possible meanings? How
can three people divide a cake among themselves so that their shares
are “proportional”?
Or “envy-free”? Can
we prove that these methods are guaranteed
always to work? Can these methods be
used for more than three people? What
happens if we want to divide an inheritance consisting of several
pieces of
furniture? (We don't want to be cutting any furniture into pieces!) We will conclude with an “envy-free” method
for this situation, recently discovered by the speaker.
Cake
cutting algorithm demonstration involving all students in class.