Week of January 25 - 29

Monday, January 25

 2:30 GROUPS AND GEOMETRIES SEMINAR  - Room 459 MSC
      Sergey Shpectorov, Mathematics and Statistics, BGSU 
      "Open special cases of the distance transitive graphs problem"

 3:30 ANALYSIS SEMINAR  - Room 459 MSC
      Mihaela Marcusanu, Mathematics and Statistics, BGSU 
      "Universal measurable functions"

Wednesday, January 27

 2:30 GROUPS AND GEOMETRIES SEMINAR  - Room 459 MSC
      Sergey Shpectorov, Mathematics and Statistics, BGSU 
      "Open special cases of the distance transitive graphs problem"

 3:30 ALGEBRA SEMINAR  - Room 459 MSC
      Warren McGovern, Mathematics and Statistics, BGSU 
      "Algebraic properties of rings of continuous functions"

 3:30 STATISTICS SEMINAR  - Room 238 MSC *** Note room ***
      G. P. Patil, Distinguished Lukacs Professor, BGSU
      "Environmental and ecological statistics"
  *** First talk of the semester ***

 7:00 ACTUARIAL SCIENCE SOCIETY  - Room 459 MSC
      Towers Perrin Actuarial Consulting Firm, Chicago
      Discussion of the company's line of business
      All are invited and refreshments and food will be available.

Thursday, January 28

 4:00 STATISTICS SEMINAR  - Room 459 MSC
      Jim Albert, Mathematics and Statistics, BGSU 
      "Ordinal modeling using latent variables"

Friday, January 29

 3:15 Coffee
 3:45 COLLOQUIUM  - Room 459 MSC
      Regents Professor Ernest E. Shult, Kansas State University
      "Remarks on the classification of polar spaces"
      Abstract: The general semilinear groups act as the full groups
        of symmetries of the classical projective spaces.  Projective
        spaces of rank at least three or more are all characterized by
        the famous Veblen-Young axioms.  All other classical groups
        are the groups of symmetries of polar spaces.  The polar
        spaces of rank at least three are characterized by axioms even
        simpler than the Veblen-Young axioms.  This fact is a
        culmination of work which began in the 1940's and has been
        enlarged and revised several times since.  For polar spaces of
        rank at least four, there is a teachable account of this
        classification, which is pieced together from the work of many
        authors.  I hope to give an overview of this classification as
        currently revised, correcting along the way some errors that
        have been insinuated into revisions appearing in the in the
        current literature.