Posted April 18, 2013

MathBytes Technology Colloquium

4:30 pm – 5:30 pm Keisler Lounge, Lockett Hall 321

Richard Frnka, Department of Mathematics, LSU Graduate Student
Programming In Python

Abstract: Don\'t have any programming experience? Python is perfect for you! Have lots of programming experience? Python is perfect for you! This talk will introduce the language and highlight the advantages of using Python. Some basic concepts and math examples will be shown, along with a demonstration of some interesting algorithms.

Posted August 13, 2013
Last modified August 16, 2013

MathBytes Technology Colloquium

1:00 pm Keisler Lounge

Dan Linville, WebAssign
All your WebAssign questions answered

Posted July 25, 2013
Last modified August 27, 2013

MathBytes Technology Colloquium

3:30 pm Lockett 277

Troy Schaudt, Wolfram Research
New Features in Computing and Teaching with Mathematica

Posted March 17, 2014
Last modified March 19, 2014

MathBytes Technology Colloquium

3:30 pm Keisler Lounge, 3rd Floor, Lockett Hall

Simon Pfeil, Louisiana State University
Remote Access and the Command Line

Abstract: Imagine you are at a conference as speaker, and your laptop goes missing! Without your slides and TeX files, what can you do? Come to this talk, and find out how you could recover your documents from the servers on campus, transfer files, and make changes remotely with a basic knowledge of the command line.

Posted March 26, 2014

MathBytes Technology Colloquium

1:30 pm Keisler Lounge, 3rd floor, Lockett Hall

Ben Warren, Department of Mathematics, LSU Graduate Student
Getting Started with Project Euler

Project Euler is an online repository of mathematical puzzles. Learn how Project Euler can help teach you how to improve your programming skills and impress your friends!

Posted April 4, 2014

MathBytes Technology Colloquium

1:30 pm Keisler Lounge, 3rd floor, Lockett Hall

Jessica Bass, Department of Mathematics, LSU Graduate Student
An Introduction to Mathematica 9

Wolfram Mathematica is a great program to use for various mathematical computations. This talk will feature an introduction to using Mathematica and highlight features that are new to version 9. We will also discuss the compatibility of the Combinatorica package with Mathematica 9.

Posted April 8, 2014

MathBytes Technology Colloquium

2:30 pm Keisler Lounge, 3rd floor, Lockett Hall

Matt Barnes, Department of Mathematics, LSU Graduate Student
Sage Advice

Have you ever performed tedious calculations on your own personal computer? Would you much rather our computers do your work for you? Come learn how Sage, and our own math department computation servers, can save you time and resources. No prior experience with Sage is required or assumed.

Posted October 2, 2014

MathBytes Technology Colloquium

3:00 pm Computer Lab, Room 369, 3rd floor, Lockett Hall

Ben Warren, Department of Mathematics, LSU Graduate Student
You should have a homepage!

Setting up your LSU Math homepage is quick and easy, and this workshop will show you how to do it. Step-by-step instructions will be given, and everyone will leave with a homepage.

Posted October 21, 2014

MathBytes Technology Colloquium

2:30 pm Keisler Lounge, 3rd Floor, Lockett Hall

Zachary Gershkoff, Mathematics Department, LSU
Formulas and Conditional Formatting in Spreadsheets

If you use LibreOffice Calc or another spreadsheet program to manage grades or finances or other numbers, this talk will show you how to use formulas to make your spreadsheets prettier and your life easier.

Posted March 2, 2015
Last modified March 13, 2015

MathBytes Technology Colloquium

3:30 pm Keisler Lounge, 3rd Floor, Lockett Hall
(Originally scheduled for Tuesday, March 3, 2015)

Simon Pfeil, Louisiana State University
Graphics in LaTeX: An Introduction to TikZ

Bring your laptop to this crash course in TikZ graphics programming. This talk will cover the basics of using TikZ in LateX to make graphs and diagrams.

Posted March 22, 2015
Last modified March 24, 2015

MathBytes Technology Colloquium

2:30 pm Keisler Lounge, 3rd Floor, Lockett Hall

Lucius Schoenbaum, LSU
Introduction to SINGULAR

SINGULAR is a computer algebra system for computations in commutative algebra, algebraic geometry, and singularity theory. I will introduce the system and present some examples to help first-time users get started. Prerequisite: an undergraduate or graduate course in abstract algebra should be sufficient.

Posted April 15, 2015

MathBytes Technology Colloquium

2:30 pm – 3:30 pm Keisler Lounge, 3rd Floor, Lockett Hall

Gerhardt Funk, Department of Mathematics, Louisiana State University Graduate Student
Prime Number Generation in Python

The prime numbers are of fundamental importance to number theory and have generally interested mathematicians since antiquity. But how do we find them? In this interactive talk, we\'ll create a program in Python which generates the primes and try to maximize its efficiency. This talk will be particularly informative for those who want to know more about the basics of coding and computer science.

Posted April 23, 2015

MathBytes Technology Colloquium

3:30 pm Keisler Lounge, 3rd Floor, Lockett Hall

Jennifer Li, Louisiana State University
An Introduction to Sage

Sage is an important tool for mathematicians from many different areas. The purpose of this talk is to introduce some basic Sage functions, with an emphasis on its algebraic capabilities. I will show examples of Sage computations related to topics seen in a first year abstract algebra course, such as modular arithmetic and group theory, as well as from more specialized areas, such as number theory and elliptic curves.

Posted March 15, 2016

MathBytes Technology Colloquium

2:00 pm – 3:00 pm 138 Lockett Hall

Troy Schaudt, Wolfram Research
Mathematica 10 in Education and Research

This talk illustrates capabilities in Mathematica 10 and other Wolfram technologies that are directly applicable for use in teaching and research on campus. Topics of these technical talks include:

* Enter calculations in everyday English, or using the flexible Wolfram Language
* Visualize data, functions, surfaces, and more in 2D or 3D
* Store and share documents locally or in the Wolfram Cloud
* Use the Predictive Interface to get suggestions for the next useful calculation or function options
* Access trillions of bits of on-demand data
* Use semantic import to enrich your data using Wolfram curated data
* Easily turn static examples into mouse-driven, dynamic applications
* Access 10,000 free course-ready applications
* Utilize the Wolfram Language\'s wide scope of built-in functions, or create your own
* Get deep support for specialized areas including machine learning, time series, image processing, parallelization, and control systems, with no add-ons required

Current users will benefit from seeing the many improvements and new features of Mathematica 10 (http://www.wolfram.com/mathematica/new-in-10/), but prior knowledge of Mathematica is not required.

Posted April 5, 2016

MathBytes Technology Colloquium

4:30 pm Keisler Lounge, 3rd Floor, Lockett Hall

Kimberly D'souza, Louisiana State University
An Introduction to Neural Networks

A neural network is a programming tool used to try to enable machines to more effectively perform tasks that are solved by humans. This involves both an initial 'teaching' of the machine as well as one or more algorithms so that it will 'learn' continuously. The goal of these networks is to mimic (as closely as possible) the functionality of the human brain. You may recall the supercomputer Watson which had a quite successful run on Jeopardy. Part of Watson's design included neural networking. In this talk we will provide an introduction to what a neural network is and how they are initially taught and continue to learn. Finally, we will look at implementation of some simple neural networks using built-in functionality in both R and Python.

Posted April 28, 2016

MathBytes Technology Colloquium

2:30 pm Room 233, Lockett Hall

Alex Dunkel, Louisiana State University Graduate Student
Introduction to Remote Access

Using a remote server instead of your own computer for your computations can be more efficient and time-effective. This talk demonstrates how to use a command line interface to create an SSH connection to a remote server and make use of this shared resource. We will also explore how to make use of parallelization through a simple introduction to OpenMP, a method for multithreaded programming.