Joint IAS/PU Groups and Dynamics Seminar

Thurston gave an explicit construction of pseudo-Anosov elements 
in the mapping class group of a compact surface, using Dehn twists in 
pairs of filling multicurves.  We show that the probability that a random 
walk of length $n$ on the mapping class group gives an element which has a 
power arising from Thurston’s construction tends to zero as $n$ tends to 
infinity.  This is joint work with Jing Tao.