Jenny Quinn

University of Washington Tacoma

What the Pfaff?

In 1996, Donald Knuth wrote "Pfaffians are more fundamental than determinants." However, not many people are familiar with the matrix function on skew symmetric matrices known as the Pfaffian. This talk starts from the definition of the Pfaffian and explores it's combinatorial interpretations and connection to determinants. It showcases sign-reversing involutions, a powerful and often under appreciated combinatorial method, with guest appearances from knot theory and game theory.