Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Computational Algebra (CIRCA) lunchtime seminar

There will be a CIRCA lunchtime seminar on Thursday 27th March at 1pm in Maths Lecture Theatre B.

Ben Claydon and Joe Edwards will speak.

Ben's Title: Query Updates for Similarity Search

Ben's Abstract: Similarity search encompasses the task of finding those objects in a large collection which are most alike to, in some way, an object presented by the user as a query. The domain of these objects is wide, from images to text to chemical structures. This task becomes yet harder when the database becomes extremely large, and a sublinear query time with respect to the database size becomes a requirement. This talk discusses why the problem becomes so hard when presented with complex data, and how algorithms and data structures can be engineered to serve these queries.

Joe's Title: Infinitely presented finite semigroups

Joe's Abstract: One way to obtain normal forms for elements of a finitely presented monoid is to identify words with combinatorial objects. Perhaps the most well-known example of this appears in the Plactic monoid, where words are identified with Young tableaux according to the Robinson–Schensted insertion algorithm.

In this talk, we will define a monoid due to Hivert, Novelli and Thibon that relates to binary search tree insertion — the Sylvester monoid — and discuss the properties of some of its quotients.

Details about this event can be found at https://circa.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/2025/03/25/circa-seminar-27th-march/

For more information about CIRCA and its activities, visit https://circa.st-andrews.ac.uk/