Thomas Zaslavsky

Teaching Schedule

Math 510 (Spring 2022): Introduction to Graph Theory (graduate level)

Class home page.
Textbook: W.T. Tutte, Graph Theory. (Rigorous.)

Past Courses

Quotations of the Month

Proclaim Liberty throughout all the Land
unto all the Inhabitants Thereof

The Liberty Bell
(from Leviticus 25:10)

They that can give up
essential liberty
to obtain a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Benjamin Franklin, 1755
(Ben does not refer to the liberty to threaten or infect other people, nor to the safety obtained by vaccination and medically recommended precautions. Think what it means that we have to say this.)

"Those who can't teach, do."

"Those who can't do, preach."

So many errors are buried in “clearly, obviously” or “it is easy to see”. Many years ago my then colleague Juan Schäffer told me, “If it really is easy to see, it is easy to give the reason.”

—Jonathan Borwein, Generalisations, Examples and Counter-Examples in Analysis and Optimisation, page 10.

'Tis better to have loved and flossed
Than never to have flossed at all.

—after S.J. Bruskin, July 2014

Online advertisement: "This new broom is sweeping the country"

Past quotations of the month.

Research

My Publications and So Forth
A list of published and selected unpublished works.
A list arranged by topics.

My Research Interests
Combinatorics, especially matroids, arrangements of hyperplanes, and the topic to which I devote most of my attention, signed graphs and their relatives: see
The Home Page of Signed, Gain, and Biased Graphs
at which you will find the Mathematical Bibliography, the Glossary, and a glacially growing list of research problems.
And see the New York Times.

Other Places, On and Off Site

Fraktur (German) letters, printed and handwritten forms, from Sheila MacIntyre and Edith Witte, German-English Mathematical Vocabulary, Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh and London, 1956; second ed. 1966. Higher resolution (2 MB).

Combinatorics Seminar

Combinatorics News
- Gian-Carlo Rota (Our Hero!)
  Beautifully written biography at the National Academy of Sciences.
- eXtreme Combinatorics: Design theory schedules the XFL season. (February 3, 2001.)
- A Hat Problem: It sounds like a parlor game -- but it's mathematical coding theory. (April 10, 2001.)
- Our professors have their own number.
- The End of a Reign in Graph Theory: W.T. Tutte Dies, May 2, 2002.
- Archimedes did combinatorics 2200 years ago! Read all about it!
- Sphere packing: Solved at last? or, What is a proof, really?
- A statistical analysis of The New Yorker's fiction. (Not combinatorics, but it's an unusual senior thesis!)
- Obituary of Frank Harary, who liked to be called "Mr. Graph Theory".
- A book on probability that sounds like fascinating fun, full of anecdotes and math: CHANCES ARE... Adventures in Probability, by Michael Kaplan and Ellen Kaplan (New York Times review).
- Was Pythagoras really a mathematician at all? Read the controversy in the London Review of Books: "Other Lives", by M.F. Burnyeat.
- The New York Times discovers signed graphs! Actually, it's the math column by Steven Strogatz (Cornell) called "The Enemy of My Enemy".

African Mathematics, Multicultural Math, and Math Education
- A small and selective bibliography, classified by topic, concentrating on the works of Claudia Zaslavsky.
- A moderately complete chronological bibliography of the works of Claudia Zaslavsky.
- A brief life of Claudia Zaslavsky.

Historical
- N.E. Discrete Mathematics Day at Binghamton (Oct. 10, 2003): Program
- Binghamton meeting of the A.M.S. (Oct. 11-12, 2003): Program of the Special Session on Dowling Lattices

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