Events for 04/10/2023 from all calendars

Maxson Lecture Series

Time: 4:00PM - 5:00PM

Location: BLOC 117

Speaker: Kannan Soundararajan, Stanford University

Title: Divisibility properties of the character values of the symmetric group

Abstract: The values taken by characters of the symmetric group have long been known to be integers. But only recently A. Miller made the surprising empirical observation that most of the character values are even integers, and indeed most seem to be divisible by any given prime number. Miller's conjecture that most character values are even was established by Sarah Peluse in 2020, and subsequently she and I have shown that almost all entries in the character table of the symmetric group are divisible by any fixed integer. I will discuss some of the ideas behind this and related questions. The techniques will combine combinatorial ideas together with an understanding of the structure of random partitions of integers.