Shuffling via transpositions
2025-02-19 10:45 - 23:45 (America/New_York) | Hill 705
Date: 02/19/2025

Speaker: Evita Nestoridi (https://evitanestoridi.github.io/) (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.
