An Introduction to Bell Numbers

Bell numbers count the number of ways that n objects can be sorted into any number of buckets. They were studied and named after Scottish-American mathematician E.T. Bell who wrote about them in the 1930’s, but their study actually dates back much further. We will introduce the topic from scratch, investigate some of its interesting properties, learn more about the intriguing character E.T. Bell, and delve deeper into the history of Bell numbers and their connection to Russian dolls and to an ancient Japanese incense game!

Presented by Peter Schumer, Baldwin Professor of Mathematics & Natural Philosophy.