GSO Perspectives in Mathematics Seminar Statement

GSO would like to announce a new seminar (separate from
the Graduate Student Colloquium), intended for beginning
graduate students and advanced undergraduates.  The
reason GSO is offering the seminar is because we feel there
is a need for talks that are accessible and inspirational to
non-experts.  Some beginning students have not yet
decided what to specialize in, and many others have no
notion of what is being done outside of his or her area.

Coursework can fill this need, but perhaps not optimally.
When a student attends a class the student learns the subject
theorem by theorem, definition by definition.  Although
this is necessary for mastery, two things are sometimes
lacking.  In class, a student is like a mason, laying each
brick in a building.  The problem is the student might not
know what he or she is building or why the structure is
being built in the first place.

(ACCESSIBILITY) Because many research seminars
already exist, GSO wants to emphasize that these talks
should be comprehensible to beginning graduate students
who have little or no experience within the speaker's area.
One goal that GSO has for these talks is to introduce areas
where research is being done without "blowing away" the
listeners.

(INSPIRATION) The second goal of the GSO seminar is to
inspire listeners to see how and why a particular subject is
interesting and worthy of investigation.  This might be
achieved for example by a presentation of the "big picture." The GSO
seminar can also be used to advertise a field to potential
students, curious graduate students, and faculty.

Some suggestions for topics include a historical survey, a
starting point from which current research has evolved,
anecdotes, biographies, interesting problems, applications,
and motivation from subjects outside of mathematics or statistics
(such as Physics, Chemistry, Economics).  Essentially a speaker
may choose any reasonable topic that fits our two goals, and
creative, non-standard talks are strongly encouraged.