The Fields Institute is organizing an event for the afternoon of Saturday, November 2 to help University departments reach prospective graduate students, and to inform senior undergraduates about Math, Statistics, and some Computer Science programs in nearby universities. The information day will consist of two keynote lectures aimed at undergraduates in the mathematical sciences, followed by a reception and a display of each participating university's materials.
This will give Universities an opportunity to meet students who are interested in going on to graduate school and answer their questions.

Keynote speakers:
Nantel Bergeron, York University
Daniel Christensen, University of Western Ontario

We are making a table (and poster board if requested) available to each university. Universities who wish to participate, and who have not already contacted The Fields Institute to confirm their participation should do so by sending an e-mail to the address listed below. Universities with several departments are asked to cooperate on using the space. Fields can assist Universities with renting a van or bus to facilitate student travel for the afternoon, to request assistance please contact gensci(PUT_AT_SIGN_HERE)fields.utoronto.ca

SCHEDULE FOR THE DAY

12:30 - 1:00	Open time--Information available
1:00 - 2:00	Nantel Bergeron,Canadian Research Chair in Mathematics (York) From Symmetric to Quasi-symmetric The algebra of symmetric functions plays an important role in many branches of mathematics and physics (Just think of Galois theory or representation theory). But recently we discover that the algebra of quasi-symmetric functions (a generalization of symmetric functions) is new growing player. We describe these algebras completely and discuss the role that they play.
2:00 - 3:00	Reception and information sessions
3:00 - 4:00	Daniel Christensen, (Western Ontario) From Games to Numbers and Beyond We will play games such as Hackenbush, Col and Nim, and will try to figure out a way to quantify how much of an advantage one player has over the other in a given position. We will see that this leads to integers like 0, 1, -2 and 17 and then rational numbers such as 5/2. But as we investigate this further, we will find strange infinitesimal numbers, infinite numbers and more bizarre quantities that are not positive, negative or zero!