Sage Days 78 --- June 29 to July 1st, 2016, Vancouver

Sage Days on Combinatorics

Vancouver, BC Canada

These Sage Days are organized as a satellite event of the FPSAC combinatorics conference. The main mathematical topic will be combinatorics. Everyone is welcome from Sage newcomers to advanced developers: there will be plenty of introductory talks and also time for code sprints. It is the perfect occasion to learn Sage!

This is co-organized by Pims and OpenDreamKit.

Organizers: Viviane Pons and Julien Courtiel.

Dates and Venue

Date: 3 days From June 29 to July 1st, 2016

Venue: University of British Columbia, Vancouver

Registration

Please send the following form to Viviane Pons.

Name:

Institution:

Date of arrival:

Date of departure:

Do you wish to give a talk or present a tutorial?*

* A talk can be on anything related to mathematical development (it does not have to be Sage) If you have some Sage experience, please consider giving a tutorial.

Financial Aid

A limited number of financial aids will be be distributed in priority to students and postdocs to cover mostly local costs. Please apply before April 30 by filling out this extra form and sending it to Viviane Pons.

Current status (student, postdoc, etc.) :

Estimation of budget for the whole event (travel, lodging):

Do you also participate to the FPSAC conference?

Do you have other sources of funding for this event (FPSAC aid, local funding)?

Program

This is a tentative program which is subject to evolutions depending on the requests and needs of the participants.

All talks are being held in Earth Science Building room 2012. A map of the campus can be found here.

Wednesday 06/29

Thursday 06/30

Friday 07/01

9:30

Presentation of Sage
Viviane Pons

Open Problems in Combinatorial Representation Theory*
Mike Zabrocki

How to contribute to Sage?
Kevin Dilks

10:30

Coffee break

11:00

Tutorial: introduction to Python and Sage
Aram Dermenjian

Knot theory in Sage
Amit Jamadagni

CODE SPRINTS

12:00

Install party

12:30

Lunch Break

14:00

Intro to research-based coding in Sage
Jessica Striker

Crystals in Sage
Travis Scrimshaw

The moving sofa problem
Ban Romik (15 minutes)

CODE SPRINTS

15:00

Coffee break

15:30

Tutorial: Creating a Sage class for a combinatorial object
Emily Gunawan

CODE SPRINTS

CODE SPRINTS

16:30

Introduction to code sprints**

CODE SPRINTS

CODE SPRINTS

17:00

Status report

Status report

* Open Problems in Combinatorial Representation Theory by Mike Zabrocki

Symmetric functions are a tool for understanding the decomposition of S_n/Gl_n representations into irreducible subspaces. The definitions that arise are well known computations and operations in linear algebra (inverting matrices, conjugation, Gram-Schmit orthogonalization, LU decomposition, etc.), but these computations are very slow compared to manipulations of combinatorial objects.

I'll choose 5 (time permitting) of what I consider some motivating open problems in symmetric functions/combinatorial representation theory. This is a taste of what are just beyond the limits of algebraic combinatorics now.

  1. k-Schur functions and their structure coefficients
  2. diagonal harmonics, Garsia-Haiman modules, Macdonald symmetric functions, operator \nabla

  3. restriction of irreducible modules from Gl_n to S_n as permutation matricies

  4. plethysm and inner plethysm structure coefficients
  5. Kronecker product structure coefficients

Sage does all of these computations well, usually as a mix of linear algebra and combinatorics. The algebra of symmetric functions encodes many common combinatorial objects in the coefficients: partitions, tableaux, subsets, words, integer matrices, lattice paths, Dyck paths, parking functions, set partitions, etc. and these objects are used as building blocks to describe combinatorial decompositions.

** Introduction to code sprints

A code sprint is a get-together of people around a particular software development project. During Sage days, code sprints are the occasion for everyone to get to work on a Sage project whether it is to go through the tutorials, to start exploring the part of Sage related to their research, or to get together with other participants to work on a needed feature. Sage days bring together Sage newbies along with more advanced developers: it is the perfect occasion for everyone to meet, share, learn, and code together! Every evening, we will have status report so that everyone can share their progress on the different projects.

Participants

Lodging and other practical information

Low cost accommodation is available near UBC at: http://www.ubcconferences.com/accommodations/.

The FPSAC conference will be held in downtown Vancouver, a 30 minutes bus ride from UBC. You can check the FPSAC venue page for more information and suggestion on affordable accommodation downtown.