Featured Speaker: Steve Trettel, University of San Francisco

The subjectivity of color perception has fascinated both children and philosophers since antiquity. Indeed, I recall as a child asking myself "do I see 'red' the same as my friend?” and "do television shows look true-color to my dog?" Perhaps surprisingly, while these may seem equally philosophical and unanswerable, the second is actually a precise mathematical question in disguise! In this talk, we will analyze color vision mathematically, and use the power of linear algebra to answer questions such as "why are there three primary colors?", "why do we see 6 colors in a rainbow, but birds see 14?" and of course, "what does a television set look like to a dog?".