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Speaker: Evita Nestoridi (Stony Brook)

Title: Shuffling via transpositions 

Abstract: In their seminal work, Diaconis and Shahshahani proved that shuffling a deck of $n$ cards sufficiently well via random transpositions takes $1/2 n log n$ steps. Their argument was algebraic and relied on the combinatorics of the symmetric group. In this talk, I will focus on a generalization of random transpositions and I will discuss the underlying combinatorics for understanding their mixing behavior and indeed proving cutoff. The talk will be based on joint work with S. Arfaee.