Homepage of John Irving

Last updated January 7, 2010

Who Am I?

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.  My primary research interest is algebraic combinatorics, particularly enumerative problems underlying questions in geometry and representation theory.  I am currently (winter 2009) teaching Math 1210: Introductory Calculus I. 

Contents of this Page

• Contact Information
• Office Hours
• Teaching & Outreach
• Research

Contact Information

I can be reached by foot, e-mail, and telephone as follows:

	Office:  MN 125
	E-mail:  name.surname at smu.ca (name: john, surname: irving)
	Phone:   (902) 420-5792

Mailing address:

	John Irving
	Dept. of Mathematics & Computing Science
	Saint Mary's University
	Halifax, NS, Canada
	B3H 3C3

My office hours for the Winter 2010 are as follows:

• Monday @ 2:00 - 3:00
  
• Tuesday @ 1:00 - 2:00
• Wednesday @ 1:00 - 2:00
• Friday @ 10:00 - 11:00
  

Send me an e-mail if you wish to set up an appointment to see me outside of office hours, or drop by the office and see if I'm available.

Teaching and Outreach

I am currently teaching  Math 1210:  Introductory Calculus I.  Click here to go to the course web page.

I have a strong interest in mathematics outreach programs.  I am currently the chair of the Nova Scotia Math League, a team-oriented math contest for high school students across Nova Scotia. The Halifax Math Circles is another regional program that should be of interest to curious students.

Research

My main research interest is enumerative combinatorics (ie. counting), particularly as it relates to problems in algebra and geometry.   To date I have mostly focused on problems involving factorizations in the symmetric group; that is, counting the number of ways a given permutation can be decomposed as an ordered product of other permutations with various conditions imposed on these factors (such as cycle type, minimality, transitivity).  Questions of this type are intimately linked with the representation theory of the symmetric group (equivalently, the study of its group algebra), and also the geometry of branched coverings. 

Preprints of my papers may be download below.  My graduate work was completed under the supervision of David Jackson at the University of Waterloo (Ontario, Canada).  Both my Master's and Ph.D. theses are available upon request. 

• An Enumerative Problem Concerning Products of Permutations,  Master's Thesis, University of Waterloo, 1998
• Combinatorial Constructions for Transitive Factorizations in the Symmetric Group,  Ph.D. Thesis, University of Waterloo, 2004
• On the number of factorizations of a full cycle,  J. Combin. Theory Ser. A, 113 (2006), 1549-1554
• Minimal transitive factorizations of permutations into cycles,  Canad. J. Math. (to appear)
• (with A. Rattan) Minimal factorizations of permutations into star transpositions,  Discrete Math. (to appear)
• (with A. Rattan) The number of lattice paths below a cyclically shifting boundary, J. Combin. Theory Ser. A (to appear)

Please contact me if you have any questions or would like further information.