February 2, 2014, Sundays at 3 pm (doors open at 2:15)
Royal Canadian Institute

Stan Wagon
Mathematics and Computer Science, Macalester College, St Paul Minnesota

MacLeod Auditorium, Medical Sciences Building, University of Toronto
1 King’s College Circle (Nearest Subway is Queen’s Park Station)
Co-sponsored by the Fields Institutue

Algorithmic Thinking in Mathematics

How mathematicians apply the idea of algorithms, and real programsimplemented on computers, to solve theoretical problems and real-world applications. Some easily stated problems (like the Traveling Salesman Problem) have long beenknown to be "NP-hard", so that any solution method must sometimes be too slow to be of value. Yet recent remarkable progress on techniques related to linear programming make them much more manageable. A wonderful and important application of these ideas is to the efficient organization of kidney transplants. Additional topics will include a strange new feature of the surface of Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, and some seemingly impossible geometric solids displayed before your eyes.

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