Google-opoly Theme for Annual Martin Lecture at Mount Olive College
MOUNT OLIVE – Dr. Amy Langville will be the guest lecturer at the 19th Annual Lorelle F. Martin Lecture at University of Mount Olive. The event will be held on Thursday, March 3rd , at 7:00 PM in the Southern Bank Auditorium of W. Burkette and Rose M. Raper Hall. The theme for the lecture is “Google-opoly”. The title is a reference to Google’s near monopoly on the business of internet search engines. The lecture will outline the basics of how Google works, including its famous PageRank link analysis model. The many uses of Google and PageRank will be explored, some of which may seem rather surprising – for instance, how the mathematical ideas behind PageRank can be used to predict winners in the March Madness basketball tournament.
Dr. Amy Langville is an Associate Professor of Mathematics at the College of Charleston. Her award-winning book, Google’s PageRank and Beyond: The Science of Search Engine Rankings, coauthored with Dr. Carl Meyer, explains and analyzes several popular methods for ranking webpages. Dr. Langville’s research work deals with ranking and clustering items using matrix decompositions. Her primary areas are numerical linear algebra, computational algorithms, and mathematical modeling and programming. Amy has consulted on six industrial projects with companies such as Fortune Interactive, Piffany, and the SAS Institute. She also regularly consults with law firms and is called to serve as a technical expert on patent infringement cases concerning webpage ranking systems.
The Martin Lecture was established at University of Mount Olive in 1993 by Dr. E. Lee Glover of Everett, Pennsylvania, as an annual tribute to his former teacher, Mrs. Lorelle Martin. Mrs. Martin served for 30 years as Chair of the Department of Science and Mathematics at University of Mount Olive before retiring in 1987.
A student at MOC in the late 1950s, Dr. Glover has always had a deep appreciation for Mrs. Martin for the encouragement and support she provided to him during his studies. It was in fact, Mrs. Martin that inspired Dr. Glover to pursue his interest in the biological science field and to earn his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland. In 2006, Dr. Glover endowed the Martin Lecture to ensure continued support of the program and to perpetuate Mrs. Martin’s legacy.
The event, sponsored by the College’s Department of Science and Mathematics and the Lois G. Britt Agribusiness Center, is free and the public is invited to attend. For more information about the Martin Lecture, contact Dr. Gerald Seaton at 919-658-7857.
University of Mount Olive is a private institution rooted in the liberal arts tradition with defining Christian values. The College, sponsored by the Convention of Original Free Will Baptists, has locations in Mount Olive, New Bern, Wilmington, Goldsboro, Research Triangle Park, Washington and Jacksonville. For more information, visit www.moc.edu.