2024 Joint Mathematics Meetings
University of Kentucky Math Lab
Artists
University of Kentucky Math Lab
Mathematics Department, University of Kentucky
Lexington, Kentucky, USA
Statement
The University of Kentucky Math Lab aims to encourage undergraduate math interest across a range of projects. These include research projects and outreach as well as visualization projects. We interpret visualization broadly making room for both 3d printing of polyhedra, simplicial complexes, and string diagrams and more traditional textile crafts such as quilting and crochet.
Artworks
This is a Cayley table for the special linear group for the field with three elements. Each matrix has a color and the colors are arranged to show subgroups and quotients. The 8 by 8 block of yellow and orange squares in the top left is a normal subgroup and its cosets are the red and purple squares and the blue and green squares. Thinking of these 8 by 8 blocks as single elements illuminates a quotient of order three. The top left 2 by 2 block is also a normal subgroup (its cosets are the 2 by 2 blocks of lighter and darker shades of each color) and its quotient is an alternating group. (The 4 by 4 block in the top left corner is not normal - as suggested by the quilt!) This quilt is a companion to the symmetric group quilt (2020).