Speaker: Dr. Joseph Maher (CUNY Staten Island) http://www.math.csi.cuny.edu/~maher/ Time: Friday, June 8, 2:30--3:30PM Room: Carslaw 175 (Sydney Univ.) Joint Colloquium web site: http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au/u/SemConf/JointColloquium/index.html ----------------------------------------------- Title: Random Walks on Graphs and Groups Abstract: we’ll introduce random walks, starting with random walks on the line and the plane. The study of these goes back to Polya, and they can be used as elementary models for both the stock market and the motion of particles. We’ll review some basic properties of these random walks, and discuss how they generalize to random walks on other spaces, in particular, those arising from the study of surfaces. We’ll also explain how random walks can be used to investigate "generic" properties of these spaces. ----------------------------------------------- Lunch with speaker: we meet around 1PM at the Level 2 entry to Carslaw Building.