Awkward
Today I attended this seminar:
Professor R. Bruce Richter, University of Waterloo
CanadaNew Zealand Mathematical Society Visiting Lecturer, 2004
A simple proof of Grotzsch's Theorem
Grotzsch proved in 1958 that every planar graph whose shortest cycle has length at least 4 can have its vertices 3-coloured so that adjacent vertices receive different colours. Attempts were made to generalize to allow at most three cycles of length 3; incorrect versions of this were published, with the first correct English language proof of Grotzsch's Theorem (and the generalization) appearing in dual form in 1989 by Steinberg and Younger.In 2001, Thomassen gave a proof of Grotzsch's Theorem that involves only ``local arguments"; in particular, it does not use Euler's Formula to find a particular ``reducible" configuration. In this talk, we give a particularly simple version of Thomassen's proof.
When I saw the advertisements for the seminar I thought "Sweet! A guy from UW talking about graph colouring theory!" and tried to recruit other people to go with me. Unsurprisingly, no zoo people wanted to attend.
I went. The talk was very cool. Graph colour theory makes me happy, alright. Shut up.
What was surprising to me was that apparently no math people wanted to attend either. When I got there it was just me, the guy talking, and maybe five math professors...I was prepared for the awkwardness of being the only non-math-major...I was *not* prepared for the awkwardness of being the only non-old, non-male, non-math-professor.
What kind of place is this where the math kids don't go to the geeky seminars?!?! I want to go back to KW where my love of numbers doesn't make me 'dodgy'.
Professor R. Bruce Richter, University of Waterloo
CanadaNew Zealand Mathematical Society Visiting Lecturer, 2004
A simple proof of Grotzsch's Theorem
Grotzsch proved in 1958 that every planar graph whose shortest cycle has length at least 4 can have its vertices 3-coloured so that adjacent vertices receive different colours. Attempts were made to generalize to allow at most three cycles of length 3; incorrect versions of this were published, with the first correct English language proof of Grotzsch's Theorem (and the generalization) appearing in dual form in 1989 by Steinberg and Younger.In 2001, Thomassen gave a proof of Grotzsch's Theorem that involves only ``local arguments"; in particular, it does not use Euler's Formula to find a particular ``reducible" configuration. In this talk, we give a particularly simple version of Thomassen's proof.
When I saw the advertisements for the seminar I thought "Sweet! A guy from UW talking about graph colouring theory!" and tried to recruit other people to go with me. Unsurprisingly, no zoo people wanted to attend.
I went. The talk was very cool. Graph colour theory makes me happy, alright. Shut up.
What was surprising to me was that apparently no math people wanted to attend either. When I got there it was just me, the guy talking, and maybe five math professors...I was prepared for the awkwardness of being the only non-math-major...I was *not* prepared for the awkwardness of being the only non-old, non-male, non-math-professor.
What kind of place is this where the math kids don't go to the geeky seminars?!?! I want to go back to KW where my love of numbers doesn't make me 'dodgy'.
posted by M at 5:21 p.m.
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