DePaul University Algebra and Combinatorics Seminar
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Abstract |
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How far can a stack of n bricks hang over the edge of a table? It took 5 mathematicians---Mike Paterson, Yuval Peres, Mikkel Thorup, Uri Zwick and the speaker---to finally solve (asymptotically) this 150-year-old problem, and the answer is not what most people thought. We will present a construction (due to Paterson and Zwick) and a a curious result about random walk by an invisible object, upon which the upper bound relies. Finally, we will speculate about the ultimate best way to stack bricks. |