• Random permutations 

      [SNAP-2019-007-EN] Betz, Volker (Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach, 2019-07-12)
      100 people leave their hats at the door at a party and pick up a completely random hat when they leave. How likely is it that at least one of them will get back their own hat? If the hats carry name tags, how difficult ...
    • Snake graphs, perfect matchings and continued fractions 

      [SNAP-2019-001-EN] Schiffler, Ralf (Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach, 2019-02-13)
      A continued fraction is a way of representing a real number by a sequence of integers. We present a new way to think about these continued fractions using snake graphs, which are sequences of squares in the plane. You ...
    • A surprising connection between quantum mechanics and shallow water waves 

      [SNAP-2019-018-EN] Fillman, Jake; VandenBoom, Tom (Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach, 2019-12-11)
      We describe a connection between quantum mechanics and nonlinear wave equations and highlight a few problems at the forefront of modern research in the intersection of these areas.
    • Touching the transcendentals: tractional motion from the bir th of calculus to future perspectives 

      [SNAP-2019-013-EN] Milici, Pietro (Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach, 2019-11-21)
      When the rigorous foundation of calculus was developed, it marked an epochal change in the approach of mathematicians to geometry. Tools from geometry had been one of the foundations of mathematics until the 17th century ...