Pythagorean Triples and Generalized Fractions

Patrick Rault is a Mathematics professor at SUNY Geneseo.

How many rational points are on the unit circle? That is, how many points on the circle x^2+y^2=1 have coordinates which are rational numbers? In answering this question, we will generalize the concepts of fraction and slope to find an algorithm that gives all Pythagorean Triples!

Biography

Patrick Rault is a Mathematics Professor at SUNY Geneseo since Fall 2008. His area of research is number theory, or more specifically arithmetic geometry.

When: 4pm, April 30, 2010

Where: Fenton Hall, Room 105