Harald Bohr foredrag med Persi Diaconis

Foredraget finder sted i Auditorium 1, HC Ørsted Instituttet, Universitetsparken 5.

Titel: Adding Numbers and Shuffling Cards

Resume: When numbers are added in the usual manner, "carries" occur along the way. It turns out that the carries form a Markov chain with an "amazing" transition matrix. This same matrix occurs in the analysis of the usual method of riffle shuffling cards (the seven shuffles theorem), in character theory, sections of generating functions, and elsewhere. These connections say new things about adding numbers. I will explain all of the terms above to a general mathematical audience.

Persi Diaconis

Professor Persi Diaconis er en af vor tids mest berømte matematikere. Da han havde færdiggjort sin ph.d. på Harvard i 1974, blev han ansat som Assistant Professor på Stanford og blev forfremmet til professor der i 1979. Ud over professorater på Harvard (1987-1997) og på Cornell (1996-1998), har han været professor i Statistik og Matematik på Stanford Universitet siden 1998.

For hans fundamentale bidrag, som inkluderer "pioneering work on the speed of convergence of Markov chains to equilibrium" har han modtaget flere prestigefyldte priser. Han har modtaget Rollo Davidson Prize fra Cambridge Universitet (1981) og er blevet tildelt MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (1982-1987). Han er Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Fellow of the American Statistical Association, medlem af the National Academy of Sciences, medlem af the American Philosophical Society, og tidligere President of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. Han har honorary degrees fra Chicago Universitet, Toulouse, Uppsala, Queen Mary Universitet i London, Athens og St. Andrews Universitet. I 1998 var Persi Diaconis Plenary Speaker ved International Congress of Mathematicians i Berlin.

I et interview med Morris H. DeGroot fra 1984 i en artikel i Statistical Science udtalte Professor Persi Diaconis:

"I think statistics is a beautiful rich field. How could you work in all the different areas that I've been allowed to work in, and still call yourself one thing: a statistician. The field is rich enough to allow that and even support it. You can do work in group theory and number theory, and do work in applied perception psychology, and it's all part of probability and statistics. I have no plans to do anything other than what I'm doing, which is going 20 hours a day and hoping to keep up with myself. I'm still fascinated by problems and trying to understand in my own language what the elders have been doing, hoping to relate that to what the youngsters are doing."

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Mere om Persi Diaconis:

A conversation with Persi Diaconis, Morris H. DeGroot, Statistical Science, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Aug., 1986), pp. 319-334.