MATH 421
Quandles, Knots and Virtual Knots
Last Offered Spring 2018
Division III Quantitative/Formal Reasoning
This course is not offered in the current catalog

A quandle is an algebraic object that, like a group, has a “multiplication” of pairs of elements that satisfies certain axioms. But the quandle axioms are very different from the group axioms, and quandles turn out to be incredibly useful when considering the mathematical theory of knots. In this course, we will learn about this relatively new area of research (1982) and learn some knot theory and see how quandles apply to both classical knot theory and the relatively new area of virtual knot theory (1999).