January 25

Christopher Hillar ( TAMU )

A finiteness question of Sturmfels

Abstract: In chemistry and algebraic statistics, a motivating problem is to determine the algebraic relations between (a possibly infinite number of) experimental measurements. In this regard, Sturmfels has asked whether, up to symmetry, there are finitely many of them that generate the others. We discuss the mathematics of this problem and an approach by Aschenbrenner and myself for solving it. It should be accessible to a wide audience and involves a nice interplay between combinatorics and algebra. Several open questions will also be discussed.