Dynamics Seminar: Spring 2008

The Dynamics seminar will meet on Friday afternoons (unless otherwise stated) at 2:30 in DSB C-126. All are welcome. The list of seminars is as follows. For further information, please contact me at  

Date Speaker Title:
29/2 Ronnie Pavlov (UBC) Z^d shifts with restricted subshifts and factors
7/3   No seminar
14/3 Arno Berger (Alberta) Digits and Dynamics -- Benford's Law revisited
21/3   No seminar (holiday)
28/3 Nicolae Strungaru (UVic) A characterization of continuous weighted model combs
4/4 Rod Edwards (UVic)  Dynamics of Glass Networks


Date: 29th February
Speaker: Ronnie Pavlov(UBC)
Title: Z^d shifts with restricted subshifts and factors
Abstract


Date: 14th March
Speaker: Arno Berger (Alberta) [ PIMS Distinguished Speaker ]
Title: Digits and Dynamics -- Benford's Law revisited
Abstract: Benford's Law (BL), a notorious gem of mathematics folklore, asserts that leading digits of numerical data are usually not equidistributed, as might be expected, but rather follow one particular logarithmic distribution. Since first recorded by Newcomb, this apparently counterintuitive observation has been discussed widely under various aspects. It is very natural to ask whether dynamical systems can actually generate numerical data exhibiting Benford's logarithmic distribution and whether in turn something about dynamics can be learned from BL. Both questions have attracted considerable interest recently, and both are answered in the affirmative in this talk. We explain why BL, at least in its strict form, should not be expected to hold for classical "chaotic" systems, we discuss several examples and applications which provide a clear appreciation of BL's surprising ubiquity, and we mention a few challenging open problems.


Date: 21st March
Title: No seminar


Date: 28th March
Speaker: Nicolae Strungaru (UVic)
Title: A characterization of continuous weighted model combs
Abstract


Date: 4th April
Speaker: Rod Edwards (UVic)
Title: Dynamics of Glass Networks
Abstract: Abstracted models of gene regulatory networks take the form of piecewise-linear differential equations called 'Glass Networks'. Their Poincare maps are also piecewise-linear, each piece corresponding to a cycle in the state transition graph, for which there is thus a natural symbolic dynamics. I will give some results relating the network structure (graph topology) to the Poincare maps and show how maps with interesting dynamical properties can arise.



For previous semesters, see
Spring 2006
Fall 2006
Spring 2007