Instructor: Dr. Tamás KELETI
Text: M.
Laczkovich: Conjecture and Proof and handouts
Prerequisites: Introductory math courses
Description: We try to follow the instruction given by the
100 years ago
born Paul Erdôs: Conjecture and prove!
We shall also see some of his
favorite problems and enjoy some proofs from - what he called - ``The
Book''.
According to his spirit, the course intends to show the many and
often surprising interrelations between the various branches of
mathematics (algebra, analysis, combinatorics, geometry, number theory,
and set theory), to give an introduction to some basic methods of proofs
via the active problem solving of the students, and also to exhibit
several unexpected mathematical phenomena. Among others we plan to find
answers to the following questions:
- Can the real function f(x)=x be written as the sum of (finitely many) periodic functions?
- Is there a power of 2 whose first 2014 digits are all 7?
- Can you ``cut'' a ball into finitely many (not necessarily ``nice'') subsets and ``reassemble'' two(!) copies of the original ball?
- Can you tile a rectangle of size 1 x pi with squares?
- Can you construct two subsets of the plane so that their union is congruent (in the usual geometric sense) to both subsets?
Topics:
Pigeonhole principle, counting arguments, invariants for proving impossibility, applications in combinatorics and number theory.
Irrational, algebraic and transcendental numbers, their relations to approximation by rationals and to cardinalities.
Vector spaces, Hamel bases, Cauchy's functional equation, applications.
Isometries, geometric and paradoxical decompositions: Bolyai--Gerwien theorem, Hilbert's third problem, Hausdorff paradox, Banach--Tarski paradox.