Assistant Professor Courtney Gibbons presented joint work at the SIAM Applied Algebraic Geometry meeting at Georgia Tech in Atlanta in August . She spoke about finding the number of solutions to the maximum likelihood equations for discrete cycle models.
Understanding the principal A-determinant for the matrix describing the toric variety arising from the model can allow researchers to find solutions to the maximum likelihood equations in a well-behaved parametrization and track those solutions to the parametrization necessary for solving a real-life problem using a technique called homotopy continuation. Slides from the talk are available on Gibbons’ website.
Gibbons also has begun writing the Errorbusters column in the math bimonthly magazine "Girls' Angle Bulletin." Her inaugural column appear in the June/July 2017 issue and tackles "errors of apathy," or the mistakes you make when you don't care about the "why" and just care about getting an answer.
