University of California - Irvine
Title: Exploring Symmetry: A Voyage into the Mathematical World of Escher’s Art and Sudoku Puzzles
Director:
- Alessandra Pantano
Email:
Dates of Program: August 6 – September 14, 2012
Summary:
This program seeks to lead five UCI undergraduate students in an intensive 6-week summer research
in the field of Group Theory. In the first project, students will be engaged on a mathematical
exploration of the Escher’s drawings; in particular, they will determine generators and relations for the
symmetry group underlying a given drawing and compute its signature (in the sense of Conway). In the
second project, students will investigate symmetry groups of lower dimensional Sudoku grids and Sudoku
variants, and formulate conjectures regarding the minimum number of clues in a uniquely solvable Sudoku
puzzle.
Student Researchers Supported by MAA:
- Manuel Dominguez
- Emmanuel Ubongen Galang
- Gustavo Reyes
- Natalie Rustria
- George Villegas Vazquez
Program Contact:
Bill Hawkins
MAA SUMMA
bhawkins@maa.org
202-319-8473