Graduate course on Symmetric Functions
Math 697 W  Symmetric functions


Instructor: Frank Sottile

Text:
  Bruce Sagan, "The Symmetric Group: Representations, 
  Combinatorial Algorithms, and Symmetric Function", 
  Springer Verlag (Graduate Texts in Mathematics, 2003)
 
Prerequisites:
  The prerequisites for the course are either the undergraduate or the
graduate sequence in Algebra and some mathematical maturity should suffice.

Description:
  Symmetric functions are a central object in enumerative
combinatorics and have applications in representation 
theory (they are the characters of irreducible representations
of the general linear and symmetric groups).

  This course will begin with the elementary algebraic
and combinatorial theory of symmetric functions, including 
Schur functions and the Littlewood-Richardson rule.  The 
middle of the course would discuss their role in the representation
theory of the symmetric group and of the general linear group.
The final part of the course would discuss applications of 
symmetric functions and their cousins, quasi-symmetric functions,
to enumerative combinatorics.

We will use (but not strictly follow) the text book by Bruce Sagan.