Alice in Wonderland learns how to compute determinants.

Series
Research Horizons Seminar
Time
Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - 12:00pm for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 171
Speaker
Stavros Garoufalidis – Georgia Tech School of Mathematics – stavros@math.gatech.edu
Organizer
Craig Sloane
Dodgson (the author of Alice in Wonderland) was an amateur mathematician who wrote a book about determinants in 1866 and gave a copy to the queen. The queen dismissed the book and so did the math community for over a century. The Hodgson Condensation method resurfaced in the 80's as the fastest method to compute determinants (almost always, and almost surely). Interested about Lie groups, and their representations? In crystal bases? In cluster algebras? In alternating sign matrices? OK, how about square ice? Are you nuts? If so, come and listen.