Confidence Interval

A poem about estimating probabilities

Tuesday

It\u27s Tuesday, and the week\u27s no longer new . . . This poem\u27s form is taken from the structure of the field with seven elements: the meter, in iambs, follows a pattern based on 5, 4, 6, 2, 3, the nontrivial values taken by powers of 5 (mod 7) as it generates the group of units of the field

Branch cuts: writing, editing, and ramified complexities

As I was preparing my tenure application, the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents voted to redefine tenure, removing many of the institution's historical protections. Reevaluating my career priorities in light of these changes and a resurgent two-body problem, I recognized that my fundamental goal was communicating mathematical ideas. I found a new role as an editor at Mathematical Reviews, part of the American Mathematical Society. To my surprise, thinking more about my identity as a writer and editor also changed my perspective on my own sexuality and gender identity, inspiring new approaches to leadership.Comment: Appears in the volume Aspiring and Inspiring: Tenure and Leadership in Academic Mathematics (AMS, 2023

Hypergeometric decomposition of symmetric K3 quartic pencils

We study the hypergeometric functions associated to five one-parameter deformations of Delsarte K3 quartic hypersurfaces in projective space. We compute all of their Picard--Fuchs differential equations; we count points using Gauss sums and rewrite this in terms of finite field hypergeometric sums; then we match up each differential equation to a factor of the zeta function, and we write this in terms of global L-functions. This computation gives a complete, explicit description of the motives for these pencils in terms of hypergeometric motives.Comment: 70 pages, minor revision, to appear in Research in the Mathematical Science