Graduate Student / Postdoc Seminar

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The Polynomial Method in Combinatorics

Speaker: Larry Guth

Location: Warren Weaver Hall 1302

Date: Friday, March 23, 2012, 1 p.m.

Synopsis:

In the last five years, several difficult combinatorial problems have been solved by an unexpected argument using polynomials. The combinatorial problems involved have to do with the way that lines intersect in Euclidean space. We will discuss the example of the joints problem - a problem about the intersections of lines in 3-dimensional space. This problem was posed in the early 90's and was open for close to twenty years. We now have a one page proof, which I want to explain in detail.