Place: Mudd 303
Time: 4:00pm
Speaker: Doron Zeilberger, Rutgers University
Title: How do I walk to thee? Let me count the
ways
Abstract: Suppose that you are in Manhattan at the corner of 0th Street and 0th Avenue and your lover is at the corner of nth St. and nth Ave. , in how many ways can you walk to him?, if you want to get there as soon as possible. This is an easy exercise if you avoid Broadway. But if Broadway is allowed, or you are drunk, or Manhattan is d-dimensional (d > 2), or you are a Chess Rook? (walking positively, but you are in no hurry), or a Chess Queen? (with the same conditions) then you better use a computer, not just to get numeric answers (for numeric n), but to get symbolic answers (i.e. "formulas"), in terms of n (with an appropriate poetic license for the use of the word formula).
[Note, this talk covers some of the material in this article (by DZ), as well as this article (by Manuel Kauers and DZ) as well as this article (by Manuel Kauers, Christoph Koutschan and DZ) as well as a forthcoming article by Manuel Kauers and DZ, for which so far there is only this webpage (prepared by Manuel Kauers).]