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Some Talks and Preprints

This is a rather mixed collection of preprints, overhead projector slides, and handouts from talks on topics from computational group theory, most of them by members of the GAP Group and most of them wholly or partly about GAP. They are sorted in reverse chronological order (newest first). The last of them even predates GAP and some of those from 1997 reflect the changeover from GAP 3 to GAP 4, so they are mainly of historical interest. Some of the examples described in the documents refer to earlier versions of GAP. Updated versions of such have been inserted into the collection of Examples. Also, there are pointers from the page Learning GAP to those talks which were intended to introduce to GAP or special ascpects of it. See also the page Applications.

In the way of conference talks, many of them were prepared in a hurry, and/or without references to hand. Details should not be relied upon without checking, and certainly represent no more than the opinion of the author at the time. There is also some overlap between them.

In several cases, OHP slides were prepared using LaTeX and the lslide style, which can be obtained from our web server.

Additional contributions are welcome.


Talks from GAP Days
Since 2014, we periodically organise GAP Days. These are meetings where developers and users with programming experience are invited to influence the future development of GAP by initiating and contributing to discussions and coding sprints. You can find materials from past GAP days (and information about the future ones) under respective pages here.

Using GAP Effectively: Some Tips and Pitfalls
Olexandr Konovalov's lecture for the GAP Tutorial at the 20th Postrgaduate Group Theory Conference (July 16-20, 2018, St Andrews) in the form of a Jupyter notebook which is runnable online on Binder (to launch it, click on the "launch binder" badge on this page).

Talks from the Second CoDiMa Training School in Computational Discrete Mathematics (October 17-21, 2016, International Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Edinburgh)

Talks from the First CoDiMa Training School in Computational Discrete Mathematics (November 16-20, 2015, University of Manchester)

Leonard Soicher's talk from the Groups in Galway 2009 conference on The Joy of GAP Packages (pdf).

Talks from the 2007 Braunschweig GAP Packages Workshop .
Slides of many of the talks given here.

Solving the F^{a,b,c} conjecture
A seminar given by Edmund Robertson to North Eastern Geometric Group Theory on 23 November 2005 about how a conjecture concerning a class of finitely presented groups was solved using computer generated proofs derived from coset enumeration for specific groups in the class.

Talks from the 2003 NETCA Instructional Workshop on computational group theory
In particular on general aspects of GAP by Steve Linton,
and on representation theory in GAP by Gerhard Hiss.

A report on the 2001 Oberwolfach Meeting on Computational Group Theory
Provides abstracts of all talks.

GAP 4 tutorial at ISSAC 2000 at St Andrews (Alexander Hulpke)
Handout provided for the participants.

Talks from the 1999 Linz Workshop on Advanced Programming in GAP 4
Slides of many of the talks given there.

The GAP 4 Type System: Organising Algebraic Algorithms
(Thomas Breuer, Steve Linton)
Paper accepted for ISSAC (International Symposium on Symbolic and Algebraic Computation) 1998 at Rostock (Available in DVI and PostScript)

The GAP 4 Type System Steve Linton
Talk delivered at the workshop: "Mathematical Softwares" in Kobe, Japan, December 1997.
(Available in LaTeX, DVI, and PostScript)

An introduction to groups, in particular finite soluble groups
Slides to the first five talks by Bettina Eick at the conference `Methods of computer algebra in finite geometry' in Caserta, Italy, November 1997.

Recent Developments in Computational Algebra (Steve Linton)
Plenary lecture at Groups St Andrews 1997 in Bath. August 1997.
Includes a slightly reworked version of the Higman-Sims example given in the next talk and an investigation of quotients of Grigorchuk's group.
(Available in LaTeX, DVI, and PostScript).
An updated version of the Grigorchuk example running under GAP 4 is also available.

Constructing the Higman-Sims group from the number 23 (Alexander Hulpke)
Software demonstration at the 16th British Combinatorial Conference in London. July 1997. (Available as  plain GAP code and HTML with explanations).
An updated version of the example running under GAP 3 is available. For GAP 4 the example has been merged into the Co3 example.

Computing with Semigroups and Monoids (Steve Linton)
A 40 minute conference talk, partly about some new techniques for computing with transformation semigroups, partly about computation in group theory, and GAP in particular. July 1997.
(Available in LaTeX, DVI, and PostScript)

Talks from the 1997 Oberwolfach Meeting on Computational Group Theory
Handouts of some of the talks of that meeting.

An Introduction to GAP (Steve Linton)
A two hour introduction for beginners, delivered at the workshop "Nilpotent and Soluble Quotient Methods" in Trento, Italy, June 1997.
(Available in LaTeX, DVI, and PostScript)

The State of the Art in Computational Algebra (Steve Linton)
A one-hour seminar given to a general mathematical audience in Nottingham, June 1997.
(Available in LaTeX, DVI, and PostScript)

GAP: Status Report and Some Possible Directions (Steve Linton)
A 45 minute talk to an expert audience in Oberwolfach, June 1997.
(Available in LaTeX, DVI, and PostScript)

GAP Workshop, St Andrews, April 1997
A brief welcome by Steve Linton, available in LaTeX, DVI, and PostScript.
Concluding remarks by Steve Linton, available in LaTeX, DVI, and PostScript.

Computers in Group theory - An introduction to GAP (Alexander Hulpke)
Overview of Computational group theory, focussing on GAP. Delivered at Rennes, April 1996.
(Available in LaTeX, DVI, and PostScript)

An Overview of the GAP System (Steve Linton)
Overview of GAP for computer algebraists, delivered at a MathFIT workshop in Oxford, April 1996.
(Available in LaTeX, DVI, and PostScript)

Character Tables of Weyl Groups in GAP (Götz Pfeiffer)
A guideline for a GAP 3 implementation of the character tables of the series of Weyl groups of type A, B, and D, and some related groups.
Bayreuther Math. Schriften 47 (1994), 165-222.

An invitation to computational group theory (Joachim Neubueser)
A general overwiew of the development of computational group theory, current techniques and directions.
Invited talk at the conference 'Groups St Andrews' at Galway 1993.
(Available in DVI and PostScript)

An elementary introduction to computational methods for finitely presented groups
(Joachim Neubueser together with S. Sidki)
English version of "Alguns Procedimentos Computationais Para Grupos Dados Por Una Apresentaccao Finita", Matematica Universitaria 8 (1988) 77-120.
(Available in DVI and Postscript)