BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:icalendar-ruby
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
METHOD:PUBLISH
BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
TZID:Europe/Vienna
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
DTSTART:20240331T030000
TZOFFSETFROM:+0100
TZOFFSETTO:+0200
RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=-1SU;BYMONTH=3
TZNAME:CEST
END:DAYLIGHT
BEGIN:STANDARD
DTSTART:20241027T020000
TZOFFSETFROM:+0200
TZOFFSETTO:+0100
RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=-1SU;BYMONTH=10
TZNAME:CET
END:STANDARD
END:VTIMEZONE
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260409T031826Z
UID:1712755800@ist.ac.at
DTSTART:20240410T153000
DTEND:20240410T163000
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: László Lovász\nhosted by Tim Browning \nAbstract: F
 rom Zeno's paradoxes to quantum physics\, the question of the continuous n
 ature of our world has been prominent and remains unanswered. Does space-t
 ime really exist\, or is it just a good model for an enormous\, but finite
  number of elementary particles?Discrete structures behave quite different
 ly from continuous ones. The great success story of mathematics in the 18-
 th and 19-th centuries was the development of analysis\, with extremely po
 werful tools such as differential equations or Fourier series\, and with b
 y now very standard methods like the famous (infamous?) epsilon-delta tech
 nique. Discrete mathematics had a later start\, but for importance of its 
 applications it is catching up. Its proof techniques are different\, such 
 as enumeration or induction. In the continuous world\, algorithms are most
 ly computations\, with numerical analysis at the center. In the discrete w
 orld\, algorithmic ideas are more diverse\, including searching\, recurren
 ce\, and (yes!) pulling in methods from continuous mathematics.I will argu
 e that these worlds are not as far apart as they seem. The use of computer
 s forces us to approximate continuous structures by finite ones\; but perh
 aps more surprisingly\, very large finite structures can be very well appr
 oximated by continuous structures\, and this approximation gets rid of inc
 onvenient and unnecessary details. Many fundamental questions of mathemati
 cs\, probability\, or physics can be asked in both settings\, and their ap
 proaches cross-fertilize each other.
LOCATION:Raiffeisen Lecture Hall\, ISTA
ORGANIZER:birgit.oosthuizen-noczil@ist.ac.at 
SUMMARY:László Lovász: Discrete or continuous?
URL:https://talks-calendar.ista.ac.at/events/4399
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR