This is a schedule of the what we have covered so far and the plan for
the next few lectures.
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Feb 5: Introduction
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Feb 10: Polytopes, polyhedra and cones. Equivalence between H- and
V-representations. Fourier-Motzkin elimination, double description
method.
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Feb 12: Farkas lemma, Caratheodory's theorem. Colorful version.
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Feb 17: no classes (and Feb 18: cancelled due to snow storm)
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Feb 19: Faces. Defs + basic properties.
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Feb 24: Face lattice. Polarity. Combinatorial equivalence.
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Feb 26: Simplicial and simple polytopes. Cyclic polytopes.
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Mar 3: Reconstructing a simple polytope from its
graph.
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Mar 5: Dehn-Somerville equations. Affine hull of f-vectors for
simplicial polytopes. Shellings of polytopal complexes.
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Mar 10: Shellings (cont'd). Euler-Poincare formula. Upper bound theorem.
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Mar 12: Upper bound theorem.
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Mar 17: Class cancelled.
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Mar 19: Lower bound theorem (via rigidity).
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Mar 24: Spring break.
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Mar 26: Spring break.
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Mar 31: Lower bound theorem cont'd: simplicial d-polytopes are
infinitesimally rigid. Overview of characterizations and representations of
3-polytopes: Steinitz, Tutte, (primal-dual) circle packing (Koebe, Brightwell
and Scheinerman), Schramm's midscribe representation, and related
results.
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Apr 2: proof of (primal-dual) circle packing.
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Apr 7: Representation of 3-polytopes cont'd.
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Apr 9: class cancelled.
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Apr 14: Hirsch conjecture. Kalai-Kleitman upper bound. 0-1 polytopes.
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Apr 16: Characterization of inscribable 3-polytopes by Rivin.
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Apr 21: Patriot's day. No classes.
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Apr 23: Proof of Rivin's characterization.
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Apr 28: Volume of a polytope. Approximating using the Loewner-John
ellipsoids. Hardness of approximations for deterministic algorithms in
separation oracle model.
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Apr 30: Computing the volume exactly. Gram's formula. Lawrence's
signed decomposition formula. Filliman duality.
Some of the topics that wemay not have time to cover.
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Rationality of 3-polytopes.
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Relationship (lower bounds) between number of faces and facets for centrally
symmetric polytopes. Number of facets for round polytopes.
- Volume of polytopes. Reconstructing a polytope from its
facet volumes and facet normals.
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Polyhedral combinatorics.