[Colloq] Talk: Monday, January 14 - Erich Neuwirth, University of Vienna

[Rachel Kalweit]

College of Computer and Information Science Colloquium

Presents:
Erich Neuwirth
University of Vienna

Who will speak on:
“Combinatorial identities and visualizing recursion”

Monday, January 14, 2008
12:00 pm
366 West Village H
Northeastern University


Abstract:
Many basic combinatorics problems share a recursion structure related to Galton's board (or Pascal's triangle), described by
 
F(n,k)=a(n-1,k)F(n-1,k)+b(n-1,k-1)F(n-1,k-1) 

Visualizing this structure can help understanding the properties of then combinatorial functions.  These basic problems have recursion depth of 1, but it is possible to extend the depth and generalize the results from "short" recursion to "long" recursion.  All these results represent combinatorial functions as infinite 
matrices, and the in this context combinatorial identities are represented as matrix equations about matrix multiplication and inversion.
  
Brief Biography
Erich Neuwirth is a Professor of Statistics and Computer Science at the University of Vienna. He is a member of the Data Analysis and Computational Systems Group in the Faculty of Computer Science. His research interests span combinatorics, statistical modeling, analysis and forecasting, use of spreadsheets as a tool for mathematical education, functional programming in education, mathematics and music. He received the European Academic Software Award in 1996 for his multimedia document about the mathematical foundations of musical temperaments.

Host: Viera Proulx
 
For more information contact: Rachel Kalweit - rachelb at ccs.neu.edu