February
2, 2014, Sundays at 3 pm (doors open at 2:15)
Royal Canadian Institute
Stan
Wagon
Mathematics and Computer Science, Macalester College, St Paul Minnesota
MacLeod Auditorium, Medical Sciences Building, University of Toronto
1 Kings College Circle (Nearest Subway is Queens Park
Station)
Co-sponsored by the Fields Institutue
Algorithmic
Thinking in Mathematics
How mathematicians apply the idea of algorithms, and real programsimplemented
on computers, to solve theoretical problems and real-world applications.
Some easily stated problems (like the Traveling Salesman Problem)
have long beenknown to be "NP-hard", so that any solution
method must sometimes be too slow to be of value. Yet recent remarkable
progress on techniques related to linear programming make them much
more manageable. A wonderful and important application of these
ideas is to the efficient organization of kidney transplants. Additional
topics will include a strange new feature of the surface of Europa,
one of Jupiter's moons, and some seemingly impossible geometric
solids displayed before your eyes.
RCI
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