This workshop will introduce students to  George Polya’s theorem of enumeration and its uses.  
We will use computers to do some of the computations, so students should plan on bringing their computers.

The Hungarian mathematician George Polya devised a very clever way to count the number of distinct objects there are when the objects have some symmetries.  In this workshop I’ll introduce students to symmetries and build the structure necessary for understanding Polya’s method of counting – his so-called enumeration theorem.  Once students become acquainted with the ideas of counting with symmetries, they’ll have a chance to put those ideas into practice through many examples – by computing for themselves the number of distinct isomers of various chemical compounds, among other things – and they’ll have a chance to explore what introducing additional symmetries does to Polya’s counting machine and to the counts it produces.

Audience:  Any student with interest; no special mathematics background necessary

About the Speaker
Mark Pearson is a co-chair and member of the Hope College Department of Mathematics and Statistics.