Envy-Free Division
November 10 (Florida State, 7:30 p.m. kickoff)
1 p.m.
101 Jordan Hall of Science
David Galvin, associate professor of mathematics
Can a group of friends cut up a cake, so that no one is envious of someone else's portion? Can three people who’ve just leased a three-bedroom apartment assign rooms and rent, so that no one feels like someone else has gotten a better deal? These questions have many hard-to-quantify factors. Learn an envy-free division process that’s easy to implement, and answers these and many related questions. It was discovered by Forest Simmons and Francis Su about 20 years ago, but has its roots in a 90-year-old result in topology.