The million-dollar shuffle: symmetry and complexity - Colva Roney-Dougal

Oxford Mathematics Public Lecture:

In 1936, Alan Turing proved the startling result that not all mathematical problems can be solved algorithmically. For those which can be, we still do not always know when there's a clever technique which could give us the answer quickly. In particular, the famous "P = NP" question asks whether, for problems where the correct solution has a proof which can easily be checked, in fact there's a quick way to find the answer.

Many difficult problems become easier if they have symmetries: finding the shortest route to deliver many parcels would be easy if all the houses were neatly arranged in a circle. This lecture explores the interactions between symmetry and complexity.

Colva Roney-Dougal is Professor of Pure Mathematics at the University of St Andrews and Director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Computational Algebra.

The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.