The 2016-17 Serge Lang Undergraduate Lecture will be given on Thursday, September 22, 2016 at 4:10PM in room 60 Evans Hall on the Berkeley campus. Our lecturer this year is Ravi Vakil.
MUSA and the Department of Mathematics, University of California, Berkeley, present
The 2016-17 Serge Lang Undergraduate Lecture
Ravi Vakil
Stanford University
The Mathematics of Doodling
Abstract: Doodling has many mathematical aspects: patterns, shapes, numbers, and more. Not surprisingly, there is often some sophisticated and fun mathematics buried inside common doodles. I'll begin by doodling, and see where it takes us. It looks like play, but it reflects what mathematics is really about: finding patterns in nature, explaining them, and extending them. By the end, we'll have seen some important notions in geometry, topology, physics, and elsewhere; some fundamental ideas guiding the development of mathematics over the course of the last century; and ongoing work continuing today.