COURSE WEB PAGE: http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/villegas/S05/.
CLASS HOURS: Tue, Thu 11:00 -- 12:30 RLM 6.104
UNIQUE NUMBER: 57505
OFFICE HOURS: Wed 9:30 -- 11:00 or by appointment.
COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this course we will discuss interesting mathematical puzzles and their underlying mathematics. We will also consider the use of the computer as a tool both to analyze complicated puzzles and to actually try them out (as Java applets say).
Some of the topics and puzzles we will discuss are: Nim and related games; Blet (involving group theory); fiver (involving linear algebra over a field of two elements); chinese rings (involving the Gray code); topological puzzles; simulated annealing and other algorithms to model some of the puzzles, etc. The course will involve some simple programming in TCL or Java. There is no text assigned for the class; instead handout notes will be provided covering each topic.
The course is part of the Department of Mathematics VIGRE grant from the NSF.