Ian Morris visited the Department of Mathematics at Imperial College London on Thursday 20 March to give a talk in the Dynamical Systems Seminar.  His talk was on “A random dynamical model for the binary Euclidean algorithm“.  An abstract follows: the binary Euclidean algorithm is a variation on the classical Euclidean algorithm which is designed to take advantage of the efficiency of division by two on a binary computer. Whereas the classical Euclidean algorithm can be understood in terms of the dynamics of the continued fraction transformation on the unit interval, the analysis of the binary Euclidean algorithm requires the use of a random dynamical system.  He described some of his recent work on the analysis of this algorithm via the Ruelle transfer operator associated to this random dynamical system and its connection with a conjecture of D. E. Knuth.