EVENT DETAILS AND ABSTRACT

Title: Elementary Math Challenges involving the Pigeonhole Principle
Speaker: Miguel A. Lerma
Speaker Info: Northwestern University
Brief Description: Training session for the Putnam Competition.
Special Note: Training session for the Putnam Competition.
Abstract:

The pigeonhole principle, also called Dirichlet's box principle, states that if \(n\) items are put into \(m\) boxes, with \(n > m\), then at least one box must contain more than one item. This apparently trivial statement has surprising applications in the resolution of some challenging problems, in which the real challenge is just a clever choice of box.