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Department of Mathematics,
University of California San Diego

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Food for Thought

Morgan Makhina

UCSD

From Spanning Trees to Permutation Factorizations

Abstract:

In this talk we will explore one useful connection between graphs and permutation groups. With a little help from A. Cayley we'll see how many spanning trees a graph with n vertices has. Then we'll use this to find the number of minimal-length factorizations of a permutation into transpositions. The material should be accessible to anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of group theory. Undergraduates welcome!

November 27, 2023

1:00 PM

HSS 4025

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