There will be two lectures at the MIT Combinatorics Seminar. The dates are October 4 and 11, 2000. Time: 4:15 (refreshments at 3:45pm). Place: MIT, 2-338. Below is some helpful information.
I will present two amazing results in what seem to be elementary combinatorics. The first is the Thurston's linear time algorithm for testing whether a region is tileable by dominoes. The second is the Conway-Lagarias invariant for tromonoes (along with the tileability criteria). An attempt will be made to lose all the advanced mumbo jumbo (which apparently motivated the authors), and give a complete proof in simple combinatorial terms, accessible to all undergraduates.
We will present a notion of invariants of polyomino and prove an advance generalization of Conway-Lagarias invariants. First, we will review a proof by the author for row convex regions and then present a proof for all simply connected regions (joint work with C. Moore). While this talk is formally independent of the first one, we advise to attend both talks so as to understand the underlying logic behind the recent results.
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Last updated 9/14/2000