Abstract: If you’ve ever seen wallpaper, you’ve probably seen a wallpaper group. A wallpaper group describes the symmetries of a visual pattern that covers the plane. It turns out that there are quite a few of these: for example, the wallpaper group for a tiling of the plane with squares is different from the wallpaper group for a tiling by regular hexagons. We will explore symmetries of different visual patterns and develop a nifty notation system for recording the symmetries of a given pattern and determining when two patterns have the same symmetry type. We’ll even learn a clever method that the late mathematician John H. Conway used to generate a complete list of wallpaper groups.
Dr. Patterson is a proud graduate of Texas A&M University (B.S. Mathematics 2002, M.S. Mathematics 2003). At Texas State he is an Assistant Professor and an Assistant Director of Mathworks, summer enrichment programs for students ages 10 to 18. He was the chair of the Question Writing Committee for the MATHCOUNTS in 2017 and 2018 and is currently a member of the editorial board for the American Invitational Mathematics Examination. Dr. Patterson enjoys teaching mathematical topics from calculus to abstract algebra and is the recipient of the 2024 MAA Texas Section Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics.
| Administrative Contacts: | ||
| Jeremy Kubiak | jeremykubiak@tamu.edu | (979) 845-6905 |
| Program Directors: | ||
| Philip B. Yasskin | yasskin@tamu.edu | (979) 574-1697 |
| David Manuel | dmanuel@tamu.edu |
| Kathryn Bollinger | k-bollinger@tamu.edu |
| Senior Counselors: | Junior Counselors: |
| Wesley Fletcher | Debkonya Banerjee |
| Aditya Tekmulla | Devkumar Banerjee |
| Klaus Beasley | |
| Luke Cheng | |
| Nicolas Ladendorf | |
| Malachi Lewis | |
| Brais Macknik-Conde | |
| Steven Posvar |
© Philip B. Yasskin, 2002-24.
Last updated July 21, 2024