2. Blogging
3. Sep 16, 2012

On Friday, September 12, 2012, I gave a 25 minute talk titled “An open problem of the symmetric group” during NAU’s Friday Afternoon Mathematics Undergraduate Seminar (FAMUS). Here is the open problem that I discussed.

How many commutation classes does the longest element in the symmetric group have?

The main goal of the talk was to understand what this question is asking. The secondary goal was to illustrate that mathematics is a lively field with open questions and to provide an example of what research in mathematics looks like. Here’s the abstract.

Many people are often surprised to hear that mathematicians do research. What is mathematical research? Research in mathematics takes many forms, but one common theme is that the research seeks to answer an open question concerning some collection of mathematical objects. The goal of this talk will be to introduce you to one of the many open questions in mathematics: how many commutation classes does the longest element in the symmetric group have? This problem has been nicknamed “Heroin Hero” by my advisor in honor of a game from the TV show “South Park” in which the character Stan obsesses over chasing a dragon. We will review the basics of the symmetric group and introduce all of the necessary terminology, so that we can understand this problem.

Here are the slides.