Date: Friday 11 November 2011, 4:30pm
Location: Hempfield High School, Room 213
 Speaker: John Terilla, City University of New York
   Title: Algebraic structures ex nihilo

Abstract.  Some very interesting algebraic structures found in
topology, quantum physics, and probability can be described by an
appealing two step process.  Step 1 is an algebraic preliminary that
amounts to building structures out of nothing.  This production of
structure ex nihilo seems trivial from one perspective, but from another
has interesting connections with probability theory.  Step 2 is slight
modification of Step 1 that involves turning on "h-bar" and produces
some very intricate homotopy algebraic structures.  I'll explain these
two steps and give a couple of examples.