Why higher mathematics?
Some basic questions What is the use of mathematics, and why study it in the first place? The usual responses to these questions are that: Mathematics has wide ranging applications in the sciences and in engineering. Mathematics teaches you to think logically. I am not sure, however, these responses go far enough. My own view is that…
Septemberpocalypse
As I watched the pilot of Fear the Walking Dead, an inescapable truth dawned on me: it must be September once again. The days are shorter, leaves are falling, and it is my busiest time of year. Bar none. The university reanimates each September after a lull in the summer. Every seminar, committee, and course begins anew,…
Riemann hypothesis and other great conjectures in Mathematics
I wrote a paper Sketchy Tweets: Ten Minute Conjectures in Graph Theory that appeared in the Mathematical Intelligencer about famous conjectures in graph theory, all of which can be tweeted. Many of the big problems in graph theory are easy to state, but very hard to settle. It was great fun writing the article, co-authored with good friend and colleague Richard Nowakowski. We were inspired by Meyniel’s conjecture on the cop number, and we had excess energy from just having published our book The Game of Cops and Robbers on Graphs.
The robot crawler number of a graph
Working with some bright undergraduates, we submitted a paper to the 11th Workshop on Algorithms and Models for the Web Graph (WAW’15). It is a pity I cannot make it this year owing to other responsibilities, especially since I have never been to the Netherlands. I haven’t missed WAW for many years. In fact, I have…