Mathematics Program Presents
Making Your House Safe from Zombie Attacks
Thursday, April 20, 2017
Hegeman 308
4:45 pm EDT/GMT-4
4:45 pm EDT/GMT-4
Maria Belk, Mathematics Program
In this talk, we investigate the important question of how many zombies are required to catch and eat a person in an enclosed structure. We model the structure with a graph, and we assume that the person can move much faster than the zombies. The minimum number of zombies required to catch an intelligent person is called the zombie number of the graph. This is a variation on the "cops and robbers" game from graph theory, which can be used to define the treewidth of a graph. We will discuss how the zombie number of a graph relates to the treewidth, and we will determine which graphs have zombie number 1 and 2. This talk will be accessible to anyone who is taking or has taken a 200-level mathematics course.For more information, call 845-758-7104, or e-mail [email protected].
Time: 4:45 pm EDT/GMT-4
Location: Hegeman 308