Mathematics in Sudoku

This presentation starts off with a short introduction of the puzzle itself, giving a few words about human-like solutions, and giving a few words about how easy it is to implement those. After these human solutions a few words will be told about an algorithm presented by Donald Knuth. This part of the talk will not go too deep, as most of the more interesting questions lie with the implementation of the algorithm -- which is not strictly related to the mathematical problems.
The presentation will continue with Jarvis' enumeration results on Sudoku puzzles, presenting basic combinatorial ideas behind the enumerations and giving a heuristic approximation, and introducing the problem of a uniquely-solvable n-givens Sudoku puzzle. Afterward, the speaker will describe his own research and its connections with the combinatorial tools used by Jarvis. A short explanation of the change in the searching algorithms and methods will be given, closing with a few words about possible practical use. Time allowing, other interesting mathematical connections to Sudoku will be mentioned.

Event Topic

Networks and Optimization