SUM Series talk

The second SUM Series talk is on Wednesday, February 26th at 4:30pm in SAS 4201. Dr. Erik Bates will be giving an introductory probability talk which also gives some exposure to research questions. The talk is titled “Jack and Jill walked on a graph; They were random but worked in tandem; To avoid their better half.”  I have the talk’s abstract written below. Come for a fantastic talk and for free pizza for all attendees!

Dr. Bates’ Talk Abstract: Random walks are a cornerstone of probability theory. This talk will be both a friendly introduction to the topic, and an invitation to think about some open research problems. For instance, is it possible for two (or potentially more) random walkers on a given graph to avoid each other forever? In question is the existence of what is called an “avoidance coupling”, and the answer depends on the underlying graph. But there are many types of graphs for which the answer has not been determined. This and related problems will be discussed; no background is assumed.