“This one’s from the Book!” Folklore has Erdős saying this whenever confronted with proofs with mathematical beauty.
Erdős’s taste in mathematical proofs is reflected in Proofs from the Book of Aigner and Ziegler (available in electronic form from SFU’s library), which is a collection of very nice proofs in the number theory, geometry, analysis, combinatorics and graph theory. This summer (2015) term at SFU, Ross Churchley and I are organizing a learning seminar following this book. Every week, a volunteer will present a chapter from the book.
The seminar will be held every Thursday 2:30 pm to 3:20 pm in K9509.
If you’re interested in seeing or presenting beautiful maths, please email me to be added to the mailing list, or just come to the seminar!
Note: the version of the Book available from SFU’s library is the Fourth Edition, which is used for the chapter numbers in the table below.
| Date | Chapter | Speaker |
| May 7, 2015 | 7. The spectral theorem and Hadamard’s determinant problem | Krystal Guo |
| May 14, 2015 | 20. One square and an odd number of triangles | Fiachra Knox |
| May 21, 2015 | 34. Five-coloring plane graphs | Ross Churchley |
| May 28, 2015 | 13. Cauchy’s rigidity theorem | Laura Gutierrez Funderburk |
| June 4, 2015 | No Seminar (CanaDAM) | |
| June 11, 2015 | 27. Three famous theorems on finite sets | Kevin Halasz |
| June 18, 2015 | No Seminar (Ron Graham 80) | |
| June 25, 2015 | 40. Turán’s graph theorem | Stefan Hannie |
| July 2, 2015 | 39. How to guard a museum | Tara Petrie |
| July 9, 2015 | 29. Lattice paths and determinants | Stefan Trandafir |
| July 16, 2015 | 2. Bertrand’s postulate | Luc Lapierre |
| July 23, 2015 | TBA | Please volunteer |
| July 30, 2015 | 33. The Dinitz problem | Adam Dyck |
| August 6, 2015 | No Seminar | |
| August 13, 2015 | TBA | Abbas Mehrabian |