Joint PM/CO Grad Colloquium

Wednesday, October 30, 2019 3:30 pm - 3:30 pm EDT (GMT -04:00)

Hayley Reid, Department of Pure Mathematics, University of Waterloo

"Cutting a square into triangles of equal area"

Suppose you are given a square and asked to cut it into n triangles of equal area. If n is even the problem is almost trivial, but  when n is odd the problem becomes much harder. It turns out that it is  impossible to cut a square into an odd number of triangles of equal area, and the proof of this is what makes this  topic so interesting. It is the only known proof, and it involves valuations, a colouring of the plane, and some combinatorial reasoning. In this talk, we will cover the basics of valuations, and see an overview of the proof. 

MC 5501