Week of December 8 - 12

Monday, December 8

 3:30 INVITED STATISTICS SEMINAR  - Room 459 MSC
      Lev Klebanov, BGSU and St. Petersburg State University
                             for Architecture and Civil Engineering
      Model Construction in Statistical Estimation Theory

Tuesday, December 9

 2:30 ANALYSIS SEMINAR  - Room 459 MSC
      Tom Hinrichs, Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics, BGSU. 
      "Laplace, Lagrange, Gauss, and the Fundamental Theorem of
       Algebra at the end of the century (That is the eighteenth
       century, of course)"
      Abstract: D'Alembert and Euler attempted proofs of the
        Fundamental Theorem of Algebra (FTA) in 1746 and 1749
        respectively.  The key to d'Alembert's proof was a
        proposition: if p(z) is a polynomial function and p(z) is not
        zero, then any neighborhood of z contains a point w such that
        the absolute value of p(w) is less than the absolute value of
        p(z). In 1795 Laplace supplied a proof that followed Euler's
        algebraic proof. In 1798 Lagrange wrote a summary of the
        eighteenth century proofs of the FTA. In 1799 Gauss published
        his dissertation in which he critiqued previous attempts at
        proof of the FTA and then supplied his first proof that
        depended upon the topology of algebraic curves. Thus, Gauss
        began a new method of proof for the FTA.

 3:30 FACULTY MEETING  - Room 459 MSC


No colloquium this week.  Next colloquium will be January 16, 1998.