Date & Time: Tuesday, February 11, 2014, 13:45- 14:45.
Venue: Ramanujan Hall

Title: The Design Problem I: The Erdos-Hanani Conjecture (cont'd)

Speaker: Niranjan Balachandran, IIT Bombay

Abstract: Following the recent spectacular announcement of Peter Keevash that THE EXISTENCE Problem for Designs has been settled in the affirmative (the paper is out on http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.3665 and it is yet to be vetted, but knowing Keevash, I doubt if he has made a mistake) we would like to go through his work as part of the seminar this semester. This beckons a look at some of the related history and a look into some of the techniques and tools that have yielded something en route, before we head to his paper. Keeping that in mind, we start off first with the proof of the Erdos-Hanani conjecture which was first settled by Rodl by what is famously now called the 'Nibble'.