A perceptron is an abstraction of a neuron, which is a cell in the nervous system used to communicate and process signals. A perceptron operates by taking multiple input values, multiplying each by a corresponding weight, summing those weighted inputs together with a bias, and then applying an activation function to produce a binary output, essentially making a simple decision based on whether the weighted sum exceeds a certain threshold; it is considered the basic building block of artificial neural networks and thus is central to understanding artificial intelligence or AI.

This Math Fun Talk will focus on understanding how a perceptron learns. We will explore the mathematics of the perceptron training algorithm both geometrically and algebraically.

Presenter: Jason Underdown

This talk will be structured for all students in Math 1010 or above, but all are welcome to attend.

Abstract: How do bacteria replicate? How do health departments track the spread of disease? In this talk, we’ll explore The math of how disease spreads. How exponential growth, logarithmic scales and basic statistics help us understand and control outbreaks. We’ll break down how diseases spread and show how math is crucial for managing public health.

Presenter: Courtney Fenlon

This talk will be structured for all students in Math 1010 or above, but all are welcome to attend.

Prime numbers are the foundation of number theory and have fascinated mathematicians for thousands of years. This talk covers their definition, the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic, and the infinite nature of primes, including structures like twin, cousin, and sexy primes. We'll explore the irregular growth of prime gaps, the ordered patterns revealed by Dirichlet’s theorem, and the infinite arithmetic progressions found by the Green-Tao theorem. Finally, we’ll discuss how a predictive formula for primes could reshape cryptography and highlight open questions in prime number research.

Presenter: Laurel Weber

This talk will be structured for all students in Math 1010 or above, but all are welcome to attend.

See math, not just as a collection of homework problems, but a rich and rewarding field of science, ripe with mystery and intrigue! Caleb Walker shows off various mathematical questions he has pursued in his spare time, all stemming from simple questions in games he's played, teaching mathematics to others, software engineering challenges, and more.

Caleb Walker is an alumnus of SLCC (2019) and the U of U (2022).
He is currently working as a software engineer for Lucid Software in South Jordan.

To get the most out of the presentation, it is recommended to be taking, or have completed, Math 1050 or higher. However, all are welcome!

Event Description:

In 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google revolutionized the search engine industry by fundamentally rethinking how to search for information on the web. While conventional search engines ranked results by counting how many times the search terms appeared on the page, they theorized about a better system that analyzed the relationships among websites. They called this algorithm PageRank; it determined a website's relevance by the number of pages, and the importance of those pages that linked back to the original site.

We will explore the PageRank algorithm three different ways:

1. As a random walk on a graph.
2. As a game where players give away all they own each turn.
3. As a matrix which is repeatedly multiplied by itself.

The talk will end by briefly describing how to dramatically speed up the algorithm, and then use the PageRank algorithm to rank all college football teams and predict which teams have the best chance to win the 2025 CFP championship.