2. Juni 2022
Bernd Sturmfels (MPI Leipzig)
3264 Conics in A Second
This lecture spans a bridge from 19th century geometry to 21st century applications. We start with a classical theme that was featured in the January 2020 issue of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society, namely the 3264 conics that are tangent to five given conics in the plane. We discuss the computation of these conics, by solving a system of polynomial equations with numerical methods that are fast and reliable. We conclude with a discussion of linear spaces of symmetric matrices and their role as statistical models for Gaussian distributions.