Student colloquium

Matthew Wiersma, Department of Pure Mathematics University of Waterloo

“The Banach-Tarski Paradox”

Many of us are familiar with the statement of the Banach-Tarski Paradox. This counterintuitive theorem tells us that it is possible to break a ball into finitely many pieces and rearrange those pieces to form two identical copies of the original ball. In this talk, we will discuss this theorem’s proof and use it to motivate the study of amenable groups.