Scientific

The Sylvester-Gallai Theorem states that, given any set P of n points in the plane not all on one line, there is at least one line through precisely two points of P. Such a line is called an ordinary line. How many ordinary lines must there be? The Sylvester-Gallai Theorem says that there must be at least one but, in recent joint work with T. Tao, we have shown that there must be at least n/2 if n is even and at least 3n/4 - C if n is odd, provided that n is sufficiently large. These results are sharp

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Economists are interested in studying who matches with whom (and why) in the educational, labour, and marriage sectors. With Aloysius Siow, Xianwen Shi, and Ronald Wolthoff, we propose a toy model for this process, which is based on the assumption that production in any sector requires completion of two complementary tasks. Individuals are assumed to have both social and cognitive skills, which can be modified through education, and which determine what they choose to specialize in and with whom they choose to partner.

Our model predicts variable, endogenous, many-to-one matching. Given a fixed initial distribution of characteristics, the steady state equilibrium of this model is the solution to an (infinite dimensional) linear program, for which we develop a duality theory which exhibits a phase transition depending on the number of students who can be mentored. If this number is two or more, then a continuous distributions of skills leads to formation of a pyramid in the education market with a few gurus having unbounded wage gradients. One preprint is on the arXiv; a sequel is in progress.

The Monge-Kantorovich optimal transportation problem is to pair producers with consumers so as to minimize a given transportation cost. When the producers and consumers are modeled by probability densities on two given manifolds or subdomains, it is interesting to try to understand the structure of the optimal pairing as a subset of the product manifold. This subset may or may not be the graph of a map.

The talk will expose the differential topology and geometry underlying many basic phenomena in optimal transportation. It surveys questions concerning Monge maps and Kantorovich measures: existence and regularity of the former, uniqueness of the latter, and estimates for the dimension of its support, as well as the associated linear programming duality. It shows the answers to these questions concern the differential geometry and topology of the chosen transportation cost. It establishes new connections --- some heuristic and others rigorous ---based on the properties of the cross-difference of this cost, and its Taylor expansion at the diagonal.

See preprint at www.math.toronto.edu/mccann/publications

Lattice trees and lattice animals are used to model branched polymers. They are of interest in combinatorics and in the study of critical phenomena in statistical mechanics. A lattice animal is a connected subgraph of the d dimensional integer lattice. Lattice trees are lattice animals without cycles. We consider the number of lattice trees and animals with n bonds that contain the origin and form the corresponding generating functions. We are mainly interested in the radii of convergence of these functions, which are the critical points. In this talk we focus on the calculation of the first three terms of the critical points for both models as the dimension goes to infinity. This is ongoing work with Gordon Slade.

Particles attempt to follow a simple dynamic (random walk, constant flow, etc) in some space (interval, line, cycle, arbitrary graph). Add a simple interaction between particles, and the behaviour can change completely. The resulting dynamical systems are far more complex than the ingredients suggest. These processes (interchange process, TASEP, sorting networks, etc) have diverse to many topics: growth processes, queuing theory, representation theory, algebraic combinatorics. I will discuss recent progress on and open problems arising from several models of interacting particle systems.