Colloquium

  • September 10, 2020
  • 4:30 PM - 5:30 CST
  • via Zoom
  • Dr. Emily Peters, epeters3@luc.edu
  • Not open to the public.
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  • Details

    colloquium talk at 4:30 p.m. via https://luc.zoom.us/j/92822043616

    Title: Structures from Chaos in a NIM Type Game

    Abstract: I will discuss an ongoing research project with two 2020 Loyola grads: Ian Cowen and Zen Nguyen. We consider a modification of the famous mathematical game NIM. In our game, a state can be described as a pair of positive integers. Some states are winning, meaning if the game is in that state at your turn you can play to guarantee that you will win, and some are losing meaning no matter what you do a good player can beat you. One can figure out which are which recursively. We wrote computer code to do this for a lot of states, and plotted the losing states in the plane. The result is a shockingly complex picture with beautiful curves. We then study those curves, discussing their properties, and giving various explanations for their existence

    About the Speaker: A Professor and the Department Chair of the Mathematics & Statistics department at Loyola University Chicago, Dr. Tingley's research concerns representations of Lie groups and their associated quantum groups. He studies these objects using a variety of tools from algebra, combinatorics, geometry, and even sometimes topology.