It’s easy to generate large numbers for their own sake. A more interesting question is whether huge numbers ever arise naturally from simple-looking situations. In this talk, we will explore two examples of this phenomenon. The first will be a surprise from the International Mathematical Olympiad. The second concerns Szemeredi’s Regularity Lemma, a result of central significance in graph theory.This talk will be accessible to a general audience. Only understanding of arithmetic is required: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and exponentiation. Nevertheless, only about 50 (out of 500+) International Math Olympiad contestants correctly solved the corresponding problem during the IMO contest, and so the talk will be of interest to students spanning the full range of experience.
About the speaker:
As a math professor at Carnegie Mellon University, Po-Shen Lo conducts research on a variety of topics that lie at the intersection of combinatorics (the study of discrete systems), probability theory, and computer science. Po-Shen also works to connect the worlds of research and school math, as the national lead coach of the USA International Math Olympiad team. He was a member of the 1999 USA IMO team, which was led by Titu Andreescu. To further develop the talent base in the USA (and the world), he recently teamed up with a number of math/science contest stars to create an open web platform (expii.com), which empowers the world to collaboratively create interactive expositions on math and science topics.
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