Larry Knop, professor of mathematics, recently presented two talks on "Google's PageRank, the Simple Version." The talks described the mathematics underlying the ranking method Google uses to determine the order in which web pages are displayed when you request a web search, which is by finding the dominant eigenvector of an 8 billion by 8 billion matrix.

The first presentation was at the Seaway Section of the Mathematical Association of America meeting on April 4 at Rochester Institute of Technology. A second, shorter, version of the talk was presented at the Hudson River Undergraduate Mathematics Conference on April 18 at Union College.