Zeros of Hook Polynomials and Related Questions

We study the zero set of polynomials built from partition statistics, complementing earlier work in this direction by Boyer, Goh, Parry, and others. In particular, addressing a question of Males with two of the authors, we prove asymptotics for the values of $t$-hook polynomials away from an annulus and isolated zeros of a theta function. We also discuss some open problems and present data on other polynomial families, including those associated to deformations of Rogers-Ramanujan functions.