Yesterday was the starting of the graduate student seminar for the year of 2009 of the Winter term. Yesterday also, my schedule was pretty tight as I have a replacement of weekly discussion at 2 p.m., then at 3 p.m. my French Cancan session will took place for one hour and half. Later at 5 p.m. I need to rush myself to McGill University for the graduate student seminar for another 90 minutes.
At the beginning I was not plan to go to this seminar which is given by an algebraic (geometric) topologist entitled Introduction to Khovanov homology. Even though the abstract (see below) did mention about the contents will be quite rudimentary. I just knew that, somehow, it was not going to very quite elementary at all. Yes when you are talking about algebraic topology, most of the students here also well-know to the difficulty of the subjects.
However, after finishing my French Cancan session, I decided to go. I don't know where the sudden guts took over me, but I just did. And this time, I'm not going to walk all the way to McGill because I know that I cannot stand the cold and the windchill. So I took the metro instead (so far I have a very close attached to this transport). Still after I went out from the metro (with so many exit doors), I found out I was lost. It's not that the same exit as I was expected to be which is very close and I can see the main entrance of McGill right away. It took me about 10 minutes to figure the way out and I reached the seminar room 15 minutes late and the seminar was already started.
I sit at the very front row (this will prevent oneself to be fall asleep), and telling myself, I'm going to be board and most probably confuse trying to listening to the talk. However... yes however, the speaker was really remarkable. He used an upper case handwriting for the whole time and started to talk mostly algebra and how TQFT (topological quantum field theory) is related to the functors of monoidal map. Mostly he showed the algebra that he used (combinatory) to try to solve some of knot's problem. And he call the algebra and the idea was pretty "cute". How cool is that. I think I never heard anyone telling somethings that is maths were cute. He present it in a leisurely but yet professional and the connection of each topics were smoothly arranged. I admit that I don't recall some or most of the terminologies especially related to knot and combinatory theory, but overall I think it worth to be happened to join this seminar.
At the beginning I was not plan to go to this seminar which is given by an algebraic (geometric) topologist entitled Introduction to Khovanov homology. Even though the abstract (see below) did mention about the contents will be quite rudimentary. I just knew that, somehow, it was not going to very quite elementary at all. Yes when you are talking about algebraic topology, most of the students here also well-know to the difficulty of the subjects.
However, after finishing my French Cancan session, I decided to go. I don't know where the sudden guts took over me, but I just did. And this time, I'm not going to walk all the way to McGill because I know that I cannot stand the cold and the windchill. So I took the metro instead (so far I have a very close attached to this transport). Still after I went out from the metro (with so many exit doors), I found out I was lost. It's not that the same exit as I was expected to be which is very close and I can see the main entrance of McGill right away. It took me about 10 minutes to figure the way out and I reached the seminar room 15 minutes late and the seminar was already started.
I sit at the very front row (this will prevent oneself to be fall asleep), and telling myself, I'm going to be board and most probably confuse trying to listening to the talk. However... yes however, the speaker was really remarkable. He used an upper case handwriting for the whole time and started to talk mostly algebra and how TQFT (topological quantum field theory) is related to the functors of monoidal map. Mostly he showed the algebra that he used (combinatory) to try to solve some of knot's problem. And he call the algebra and the idea was pretty "cute". How cool is that. I think I never heard anyone telling somethings that is maths were cute. He present it in a leisurely but yet professional and the connection of each topics were smoothly arranged. I admit that I don't recall some or most of the terminologies especially related to knot and combinatory theory, but overall I think it worth to be happened to join this seminar.
Abstract:
About 10 years ago, Khovanov introduced an interesting homological knot invariant. This is a completely combinatorial gadget, that makes use of some interesting algebra. I'll outline the definition, and try to give some highlights of the developments since the relatively recent discovery of the theory. The talk will aim to be quite elementary.
(special thanks go to CRM-ISM website)
(special thanks go to CRM-ISM website)
1 comment:
wow.. oohh.. ok... err.. i dun know the hell it is.. wargahhahaha
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