Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

Linear algebra method is a very useful method in combinatorics. Lovas Theorem (a very deep theorem about perfect graph) is proved by using this way. The idea is, if we want to come up with an upper bound on the size of a set of objects, associate them with elements in a vector space V of relatively low dimension, and show that these elements are linearly independent. Then we cannot have more objects in our set than the dimension of V. We will show we can use this way to solve some combinatorics problem, such as odd town problem and two-distance sets problem.

This is due to the paper of Dr. Christian Houdre and Trevis Litherland. Let X_1, X_2,..., X_n be a sequence of iid random variables drawn uniformly from a finite ordered alphabets (a_1,...,a_m) where a_1 < a_2 < ...< a_m. Let LI_n be the length of the longest increasing subsequence of X_1,X_2,...,X_n. We'll express the limit distribution of LI_n as functionals of (m-1)-dimensional Brownian motion. This is an elementary case taken from this paper.

This talk will follow Peter Lax on the linear algebraic fact of the index of Fredholm operators such as the product formula and stability, all of which are totally elementary.

Let V be a vector space over the field C of complex numbers and let GL(V) be the group of isomorphisms of onto itself. Suppose G is a finite group. A linear representation of G in V is a homomorphism from the group G into the group GL(V). In this talk, I will give a brief introduction to some basic theorems about linear representations of finite groups with concentration on the decomposition of a representation into irreducible sub-representations, and the definition and some nice properties of the character. At the end of the talk, I will re-prove the Burnside lemma in the group theory from the representation theory approach. Since I began learning the topic only very recently, hence an absolute novice myself, I invite all of you to the talk to help me learn the knowledge through presenting it to others. If you are familiar with the topic and want to learn something new, my talk can easily be a disappointment.