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Department of Mathematics,
University of California San Diego

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Food For Thought Seminar

Pieter Spaas

UCSD

Fun with Banach-Tarski, paradoxical decompositions and amenability

Abstract:

Have you always wondered how the Banach-Tarski paradox - namely cutting a ball into pieces and assembling those pieces into two balls - actually works? Or what the mathematical reason behind it is? In this talk we will answer those questions by 1) reformulating the Banach-Tarski paradox, 2) explaining what paradoxical decompositions of various objects are, 3) constructing one for a ball, and 4) motivated by all those things introducing the concept of amenability, which has its origin in the aforementioned paradox and is ubiquitous in many areas of mathematics nowadays.

November 7, 2016

11:00 AM

AP&M 7321

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