THE AXIOM OF CHOICE.


Jim Coykendall
Department of Mathematics

Abstract: Are you pro-Choice? While widely (but not entirely) accepted as a valid axiom of set theory by today's mathematicians, the Axiom of Choice has historically been a source of more than just a little controversy in the mathematical community. In this discussion I will present the Axiom along with a sampling of some of its equivalent forms, some examples demonstrating how its necessity might so naturally and innocently present themselves, and some of its unsettling consequences...including the very creepy and widely celebrated Banach-Tarski paradox.