Campus Event Calendar
Event Entry
What and Who
Upstart Puzzles
Dennis Shasha
Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University (currently on sabbatical leave at INRIA Rocquencourt)
Distinguished speaker's lecture
AG 1, AG 2, AG 3, AG 4, AG 5, SWS, RG1, RG2
Expert Audience
English
Note: We use this to send email in the morning.
Date, Time and Location
Wednesday, 25 April 2007
15:00
-- Not specified --
E1 4
024
Saarbrücken
Abstract
The writer of puzzles often invents puzzles to illustrate a principle.
The puzzles, however, sometimes have other ideas.
They speak up and say that they would be so much prettier
as slight variants of their original selves.
The dilemma is that the puzzle inventor sometimes can't solve those variants.
Sometimes he finds out that his colleagues can't solve them either,
because there is no existing theory for solving them.
At that point, these sassy variants deserve to be called upstarts.
We discuss a few upstarts inspired originally
from the Falklands/Malvinas Wars, zero-knowledge proofs,
and hikers in Colorado, and city planning.
They have given a good deal of trouble to a certain
mathematical detective whom I know well.
The puzzles, however, sometimes have other ideas.
They speak up and say that they would be so much prettier
as slight variants of their original selves.
The dilemma is that the puzzle inventor sometimes can't solve those variants.
Sometimes he finds out that his colleagues can't solve them either,
because there is no existing theory for solving them.
At that point, these sassy variants deserve to be called upstarts.
We discuss a few upstarts inspired originally
from the Falklands/Malvinas Wars, zero-knowledge proofs,
and hikers in Colorado, and city planning.
They have given a good deal of trouble to a certain
mathematical detective whom I know well.
Contact
Gerhard Weikum
500
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Petra Schaaf, 03/27/2007 13:55 -- Created document.