The Impartial Game of Nim and the Sprague Grundy Theorem

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• Vlad Gavrila, Churchill College
• Wednesday 22 October 2014, 19:00-19:40
• Wolfson Hall, Churchill College.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Matthew Ireland.

Have you ever wanted to win a game just by choosing whether to start first or second? It turns out that you can, if you are playing the right game. This presentation will introduce the concept of impartial games, studied in Combinatorial Game Theory. I will first state the rules and winning strategy of the Nim game, fundamental for the analysis of every impartial game. Next I will present the statement and proof of the Sprague-Grundy Theorem, which enables us to form an equivalence relation between any impartial game and a Nim heap.

This talk is part of the Churchill CompSci Talks series.

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• Churchill CompSci Talks
• Wolfson Hall, Churchill College
• computer science
• se393's list

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