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,… Read More Septemberpocalypse
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.… Read More Riemann hypothesis and other great conjectures in Mathematics
Mathematics was once again in the news recently, when a high school student Joseph Rosenfield discovered an error in the expression for the golden ratio in the Museum of Science in Boston. This is the photo that Joseph took in the museum: The “error” was the negative sign in the expression of the golden ratio. In… Read More The golden ratio, Fibonacci numbers, and independent sets in graphs
GRADCafe is a meeting. An experiment. A movement. It is a synthesis of the World Cafe technique for hosting large discussions, and a social event (with food!) for graduate students at Ryerson. The idea for GRADCafe came about in Graduate Studies out of a desire to engage our graduate students in a less formal setting… Read More GRADCafe: an experiment with positive results.
