Thursday, October 25, 2018 4:00 pm
-
4:00 pm
EDT (GMT -04:00)
John Sawatzky, Department of Pure Mathematics, University of Waterloo
"The Banach-Tarski Paradox"
A famous theorem of Banach and Tarski states that a sphere can be cut into finitely many pieces that can be rearranged into two identical copies of the original sphere. This result, known as the Banach-Tarski paradox because of its unintuitive nature, has become very well-known in popular mathematics circles in recent years. In this talk we will work through a proof similar to Banach and Tarski's original argument with an emphasis on the importance of the usage of the axiom of choice in the proof.
MC 2054