This is the second talk of the colloquium double-header. The first talk is announced at http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au/s/scnitm/zhangou-SYD-UNSWJointColloquium-F-001 ************************************************************* Speaker: Prof. Michael Joswig (TU-Darmstadt) http://www.mathematik.tu-darmstadt.de/~joswig/ Time: Friday, Nov. 30, 3--4PM Room: Chemistry Lecture Theatre 2 Lunch plan: meet near Level 2 entrance to Carslaw Building around 1PM. The lunch would be at Law Annex Cafe with reservation at 1:05PM. Please keep in mind that our schedule would be a little tight with Algebra Seminar finishing at 1PM and the first colloquium talk starting at 2:05PM. Refreshments would be provided by the school in the common room on Level 7 around 4PM. ----------------------------------------------- Title: Tropical Combinatorics Abstract: it is a key observation, made by Kapranov, Mikhalkin, Sturmfels, and others, that relevant geometric problems have a combinatorial core. This lead to the invention of tropical geometry as something like a "piece-wise linear shadow of algebraic geometry". Specializing tropical algebraic geometry to the linear case leads to the subject of max-plus linear algebra. This field, rooted in optimization, is much older than tropical geometry. It is linked with signal processing, functional analysis and other areas. The goal of this talk is to give examples of simple combinatorial concepts which evolve into theorems which are interesting for pure as well as applied mathematics. ----------------------------------------------- Joint Colloquium web site: http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au/u/SemConf/JointColloquium/index.html