| coordinator | phone # | office | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Renato Feres | 5-6752 | Cupples I, 17 | feres@math.wustl.edu |
Objective: The extended graduate orientation program is an optional, but strongly recommended, activity for the new graduate students. The purpose is twofold: to introduce incoming students to the style and pace of our graduate courses, so as to have everybody up to speed when Fall classes begin; and help foster from the very beginning a cohesive and supportive social environment of graduate students, faculty, and staff, in which we can all work most effectively.
Course: The core of the orientation program is a minicourse and group work activities about some mathematics subject. This is not meant to be a remedial course, and does not necessarily cover topics that will be seen again in the qualifying courses. For this year I have chosen the topic of p-adic analysis. (More on the topic below.)
Dates, times, and locations: Most activities will take place in Cupples I, room 199. (Lunch at room 200. Bring your lunch! The place has a refrigerator, microwave oven and other amenities for general use.) The minicourse will run from August 3 till August 17, with classes on Mondays (8/3, 8/10, 8/17), Wednesdays (8/5, 8/12), and Fridays (8/7, 8/14). There will be a morning (10:00AM - 12:00PM) and an afternoon session (2:00PM - 4:00PM). Each session consists of one hour of lecture and one hour of group work. Tuesdays and Thursdays will be devoted to homework, with the students responsible for organizing their own time and meeting with their mentors.
Text: The course will be based on the text: "p-adic analysis compared with real," by Svetlana Katok. Copies will be provided to you at the beginning of classes or earlier after your arrival.
Tentative list of topics: We are familiar with the idea of constructing the real numbers by completion of the field of rational numbers. This takes one from the realm of arithmetic to analysis. But the completion can also be done using the less familiar p-adic norms, leading to whole new fields with which we can do algebra, calculus, geometry, etc. This minicourse introduces the subject of p-adic analysis, while comparing and contrasting it with the familiar real analysis. Some of the main topics are: