Friday, March 28th at 4:00pm in Kerchof Hall 317 (pizza arrives at 3:45)
Speaker: Prof. Tai Melcher (UVa Mathematics)
Title: Some random trees

Abstract: A longstanding problem in biology has been to determine the evolutionary relationships among various species. Binary trees are a natural way to graphically represent these relationships, and the reconstruction of phylogenetic (evolutionary family) trees has been an active area of research for decades. But different investigations suggest different realizations of the correct phylogenetic tree to represent the relationships between subjects, and so tractable mathematical models are required to make sense of these results and perform analysis. We'll talk about a space that models the set of all phylogenetic trees, and we'll discuss how probability and geometry become involved in its analysis.