Speaker: Professor Martin Liebeck Affiliation: Imperial College London Time: 4:00 pm Thursday, 4 May, 2017 Location: Mathematics & Physics Building (303-G13) |
I will talk about some algebraic methods that have been developed to tackle questions such as: how many shuffles are needed to mix a pack of cards? How many random steps around a circle are needed to produce a random number? How many random elementary row operations on the identity matrix are needed to produce a random invertible matrix? These questions can all be phrased in terms of random walks on various finite groups. |