Autumn 2004
Math 662: Young Tableaux

Instructor: Frank Sottile
  Office: Milner 303
Telephone: 845-4169
Email: sottile"at"math.tamu.edu
WWW: www.math.tamu.edu/~sottile
Frank has an open door office policy; just walk in when the door is open.
  Projects.
Notes on the Grassmannian.
Lectures: Tu, Th 9:35 - 10:50 AM, Francis 151.
Recommended Text: Wm. Fulton, Young Tableaux,
Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Additional Text: Some of you may find the book The Symmetric Group by Bruce Sagan useful. I have three copies, and there are a couple more floating around, so there is likely no need to purchase a copy.
Additional Text: Another good book (Frank Has a copy) is the classic Symmetric Functions and Hall Polynomials by Ian Macdonald.
Course webpage: www.math.tamu.edu/~sottile/teaching/04.2/662.html
Content
Young Tableaux are combinatorial objects with rich structure that are at the core of the theory of symmetric functions, which are important in several areas of mathematics. My intention in this course is study some of the combinatorics of Young tableaux, then apply that to symmetric functions, with a medium-term goal of establishing the Littlewood-Richardson rule. Following that plateau, we will discuss the representations of the symmetric groups, which involves Young tableaux and symmetric functions. A goal of the course will be to study some new and fairly exciting combinatorial models for Littlewood-Richardson coefficients, such as the honeycombs of Knutson and Tao, or the checkers game of Vakil, or the Mondrian tableaux of Coskun.
Grading
There will be two or three problem sets collected and graded during the term, and all students will make a presentation in the last few weeks on some additional topic. We will discuss this later in the course.
First Homework
Note Class begins Tuesday, 7 September.
We not have class on Tuesday 24 November, as Frank will likely be in Mexico City at that time.
Graph paper for drawing tableaux (an .eps file that you may print). 		.eps file of part
of Young's Lattice
Modified since 6 September 2004