Date:	Tue, October 2, 2012
Time:	11:15
Place:	Research I seminar room (rm.120)

Abstract: I will talk about my recent findings prompted by a question posed by a Jacobs Professor of Electrical Engineering, Giuseppe Abreu. I shall review the standard techniques in computation of determinants, following the now classical pair of articles by Krattenthaler, and report on a different technique that we used to answer and generalize the following question. In the study of eigenvalue distribution of Wishart matrices, a matrix of incomplete Gamma functions makes an appearance. We show that the determinant of this Hankel matrix exhibits catalecticant properties, that is, cancelations of high order polynomial terms that lead to a reduction of degree.