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Volumes of polyhedra: familiar but hard-to-get numbers
Algebra & Discrete Mathematics| Speaker: | Jesus de Loera, UC Davis |
| Location: | 3106 MSB |
| Start time: | Fri, Feb 29 2008, 2:10PM |
The volumes of polyhedra, and its close relatives (mixed volumes, Ehrhart functions, etc.) are numbers that appear everywhere in mathematics as important invariants or quantities to be computed. So, how does one go about actually computing the volume of a polyhedron? In this (mostly) survey talk I will explain why volume computation is relevant in everyone's life (but hard!), what is currently know about efficient computation of the volume, and I end by describing recent new results in this area.