Professor Jordan Ellenberg , Department of Mathematics, University of Wisconsin He will talk about a lottery scheme in Massachusetts that made a lot of money for a small group of players, and what their strategy had to do with the mathematical notions of expected value and projective geometry. I've been at Wisconsin since the fall of 2005. My field is arithmetic algebraic geometry: my specific interests include rational points on varieties, enumeration of number fields and other arithmetic objects, Galois representations attached to varieties and their fundamental groups, representation stability and FI-modules, the geometry of large data sets, non-abelian Iwasawa theory, pro-p group theory, automorphic forms, stable cohomology of moduli spaces, the complex of curves, Hilbert-Blumenthal abelian varieties, Q-curves, Serre's conjecture, the ABC conjecture, and Diophantine problems related to all of the above. My research here is partially supported by an NSF grant and a Romnes Faculty Fellowship. I am a co-organizer of the Wisconsin number theory seminar. the organizer of the interdisciplinary "Math And..." seminar, and PI on the NSF-RTG "Algebraic Geometry and Number Theory at the University of Wisconsin" grant. I am also a Discovery Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery. The MATC Mathematics Club sponsors a lecture series every semester. Speakers come from outside the school to provide us with insight into their research or mathematical curiosities they have discovered. Questions? Contact Jeganathan Sriskandarajah at (608) 243-4316.