The 2009 Math and Computer Science Department Awards Ceremony

The 2009 Case Lecture

Pebbling - Demonic Graphs and Troop Deployment

Dr. Aparna Higgins
University of Dayton

Many mathematicians enjoy thinking about mathematics without concerning themselves about what, if any, applications those ideas may have. As more people work with these ideas, they define and study variations of the original ideas, and occasionally, those variations lead to “real-world applications.” So it was with pebbling and me. I enjoyed thinking about pebbling and directing undergraduate students’ research in pebbling for its own sake. As pebbling became better known, a variation was suggested that described troop deployment. In this talk, I will discuss some pebbling results by one of my undergraduate students, and then I will consider a variation of pebbling that has been used by some authors to attempt to explain the fall of the Roman Empire.

The presentation of awards will follow the talk at approximately 5:15.