mathematics

Ioana Dumitriu

Ioana Dumitriu is a mathematics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Ioana Dumitriu rather than just read about it. In short: Ioana Dumitriu (born July 6, 1976) is a Romanian-American mathematician who works as a professor of mathematics at the University of California, San Diego. Her research interests include the theory of random matrices, numerical analysis, scientific computing, and game theory.

Key takeaways

Ioana Dumitriu belongs to mathematics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Ioana Dumitriu to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Ioana Dumitriu from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Ioana Dumitriu (born July 6, 1976) is a Romanian-American mathematician who works as a professor of mathematics at the University of California, San Diego. Her research interests include the theory of random matrices, numerical analysis, scientific computing, and game theory.

Life Dumitriu is the daughter of two Romanian electrical engineering professors from Bucharest. Early in her life she was identified as having mathematical talent, and at age 11 won a national mathematics contest. She entered mathematics training camps in preparation for participation on the Romanian team at the International Mathematical Olympiad, although her highest level of participation in the olympiad was the national semifinal. As a 19-year-old freshman at New York University (NYU), Dumitriu already was taking graduate-level classes in mathematics. She graduated summa cum laude from NYU in 1999 with a B.A. in mathematics and a minor in computer science. She earned her Ph.D. in 2003 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the supervision of Alan Edelman, with a thesis on Eigenvalue statistics for beta-ensembles. After postdoctoral research as a Miller Research Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, she joined the faculty of the University of Washington in 2006, moving to UC San Diego in 2019.

Awards and honors Dumitriu won the Alice T. Schafer prize for excellence in mathematics by an undergraduate woman in 1996. Also in 1996, as a sophomore at New York University, Dumitriu became the first woman to become a Putnam Fellow, meaning that she earned one of the top five scores at the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition. In 1995, 1996, and 1997 she won the Elizabeth Lowell Putnam Award that is given to the top woman in the contest, a record that was not matched until ten years later when Alison Miller also won the same award in three consecutive years. She won the Leslie Fox Prize for Numerical Analysis (given to a young numerical analysis researcher who excels both mathematically and in presentation skills) in 2007. In 2009 she received a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation. In 2012, she became one of the inaugural fellows of the American Mathematical Society.

References

Selected publications Dumitriu, Ioana; Edelman, Alan (2002). "Matrix models for beta ensembles". Journal of Mathematical Physics. 43 (11): 5830–5847. arXiv:math-ph/0206043. Bibcode:2002JMP....43.5830D. doi:10.1063/1.1507823. MR 1936554. S2CID 15758222. Demmel, James; Dumitriu, Ioana; Holtz, Olga (2007). "Fast linear algebra is stable". Numerische Mathematik. 108 (1): 59–91. arXiv:math/0612264. doi:10.1007/s00211-007-0114-x. MR 2350185. S2CID 6057731.

External links Ioana Dumitriu publications indexed by Google Scholar

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Ioana Dumitriu

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Ioana Dumitriu claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In mathematics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Ioana Dumitriu before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Ioana Dumitriu ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Ioana Dumitriu

In research: Ioana Dumitriu appears in mathematics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Ioana Dumitriu in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Ioana Dumitriu is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1976 births, 20th-century American mathematicians, 20th-century American women mathematicians, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Ioana Dumitriu outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Ioana Dumitriu in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Ioana Dumitriu means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Ioana Dumitriu out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Ioana Dumitriu in simple terms?

Why does Ioana Dumitriu matter?

Because it connects several mathematics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Ioana Dumitriu?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Ioana Dumitriu.