University of Washington Mathematics Department
What is the most efficient way for a grocer to stack oranges? (For simplicity let's assume all the oranges are perfectly spherical and the same size.) If that seems too easy, what's the most efficient way to stack 24-dimensional oranges? Perhaps surprisingly, very important progress on these problems has been made in the last few years. What does this have to do with NASA's Voyager missions and keeping your CD player from skipping? All this and more will be explained at this week's seminar.