[Colloquium] Talk by Igor Pak on May 18, 2009

[Katie Casey]

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

Date: Monday, May 18, 2009
Time: 3:45 p.m.
Place: RY 251

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Speaker:	Igor Pak

From:		University of Minnesota

Website: 	http://www.math.umn.edu/~pak/

Title:      Combinatorics and Complexity of Partition Bijections

Abstract:       The studey of partition identities has a long history  
going back to Euler, with applications ranging from Analysis to Number  
Theory, from Enumerative Combinatorics to Probability. Partition  
bijections is a combinatorial approach which often gives the shortest  
and the most elegant proofs of these identities. These bijections are  
then often used to generalize the identities, find “hidden  
symmetries”, etc. In the talk I will present a modern approach to  
partition bijecetions based on the complexity ideas and geometry of  
random partitions. We show that certain “natural” bijections do not  
exist, even for some classical partition identities.


Refreshments will be served prior to the talk in RY 255.