Mark Ward '99, Assistant Professor in Statistics at Purdue University, recently resolved the third question of eight Unsolved Problems written by Herbert Wilf. Wilf is a well-known expert in combinatorics and graph theory and was the Thomas A. Scott Professor of Mathematics in Combinatorial Analysis and Computing at the University of Pennsylvania.
The third problem, now solved by Ward, involves fractions that are closer and closer approximations of the transcendental number pi. Ward’s solution relies on complex analysis to precisely determine the asymptotic behavior of these approximations. Ward’s paper on the solution has been accepted for the 21st International Meeting on Probabilistic, Combinatorial and Asymptotic Methods for the Analysis of Algorithms.
The papers of the proceedings from the meeting will be published in a special volume of Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science later this year.