Persi Diaconis

The computer is taking over. AND, in many branches of applied mathematics and statistics we hear 'why bother to prove theorems? simulations and numerical approximation are easier and better for real problems'. NOT SO FAST; I will present a collection...

When several large integers are added in the usual way 'carries' occur along the way. It is natural to ask: 'About how many carries are there and how are they distributed for typical numbers?' It turns out that these questions are intimately related...

About the Niven Lectures: Ivan Niven was a famous number theorist and expositor; his textbooks won numerous awards, have been translated into many languages and are widely used to this day. Niven was born in Vancouver in 1915, earned his Bachelor's...

Consider three gamblers with initial capital A,B,C. Each time, a pair of them is chosen at random, a fair coin is flipped and $1 is transferred. Classically, the chance that the first gambler wins all the money is A/ (A + B + C). Consider the first...