Patterns Are Never Enough

Wednesday, April 29, 6:30 pm

G.H. Hardy once said, "A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns.  If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas."  But just finding a pattern is never sufficient — you need to make sure that your pattern is true.  Join Paul Zeitz in an exploration of a variety of situations in which what initially appears to be a beautiful pattern turns out to be just a mirage, and in the process, discover some of the mysteries at the frontier of research mathematics.