Monday, February 28, 2005

Latin squares: 9982437658213039871725064756920320000 permutations inside the box

A Latin square is an nxn grid of symbols in which each of n symbols appears once in each row and each column. We will discuss orthogonality, Cayley tables, and the analogy of Latin squares to the rook problem, and you will discover how Latin squares apply to tire rotation. What does the number in the title have to do with Latin squares? Come find out.

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Yup. That's my title and abstract for my upcoming talk at the Hudson River Undergraduate Math Conference, which will be held at Williams College on April 30. Sounds like fun. You should stop by; my talk is only 15 minutes long.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What an intriguing way to get people to come to your program! If I were a bit closer, I would drop by for 15 minutes of intellectual stimulation and figure out what that long number has to do with anything. I'm sure I'd learn something. Great that you have this presentation opportunity...okay...so you have to do it...but it's still good experience!