G4G's Virtual Celebration of Mind | June

CoM | Shuffling Polyominoes

Shuffling Polyominoes

Do you know what algorithm is deciding which tetromino piece you get next in a Tetris game? In this talk, I will start by answering this question and then I will tell you about several different ways of sampling random polyominoes (polyominoes are like tetrominoes but with any desired amount of squares). We will also analyze how the topology of polyominoes, measured by their number of holes, change depending on the distribution that we choose to sample them.

Erika Roldán is currently a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow within the EuroTechPostdoc Programme at the Technische Universität München (TUM) and EPFL Lausanne. Her research interests include biomathematics, stochastic topology, topological and geometric data analysis, extremal topological combinatorics, discrete configuration spaces, recreational mathematics, learning analytics, and educational technology. She accompanies her research with gamification and visualization technology. She recently founded the outreach initiative BAMM at The Ohio State University (2019), co-founded Hypothesis in NYC (2020), Matemorfosis at CIMAT Mexico (2011), and Music-Math in Mexico (2013). All of these projects promote and increase public awareness and enjoyment of mathematics and its applications with special emphasis on bringing underrepresented minorities of all ages and backgrounds into STEAM.