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Equivariant DeRham Cohomology
My lectures on equivariant cohomology are spinning a bit out of control. The questions and lively discussion, while always welcome, have stretched what was meant to be a hand-waving tour through...
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My Favorite Prime Number with Four Divisors
A prank I recommend to readers is to use the number 91 when a group situation calls for a random prime number. If done subtly enough, a decent portion of mathematicians will believe you. Granted,...
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Hyperbolic Discounting
I have always been fascinated with the study of how people make decisions. Its a complicated process that involves as much ‘gut instinct’ as rational evaluation, and is rife with systematic errors...
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Bad Talk Bingo: Brainstorming
Next week I am off to IAS for the conference on Algebro-Geometric Derived Categories and their Applications. I am starting to get worried about it, since the list of talk titles is up and only a...
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Television Will Rot Your Brain
A fun little math problem today. It came about when I misheard a problem asked by a friend, and solved a slightly different problem. It goes as follows: A child watches television everyday....
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IAS Conference Question Dump
Its now been several days since the conference at IAS, and I might as well do a quick wrap up. Overall, the conference was great. Almost all the talks were understandable, and contained new...
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Koszul Duality and Lie Algebroids
Something has been bothering me about Koszul duality lately. Well, technically many things have been bothering me about it, but here’s a particular thing that has been bothering me. Usual...
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Morse Theory Indomitable
I recently came across an excellent survey article, “Morse Theory Indomitable“, by Raoul Bott. It starts with the basic history of Morse functions, and covers the additions of Smale and Witten, and...
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Abelian Categories and Module Categories
The blog’s been rather quiet lately, due in a large part to me being in research mode right now. That also explains why my posts, when they occur, are mostly advanced. I just don’t have much...
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Rational Homotopy Theory
I tend to think of homotopy theory a little bit like ‘The One That Got Away’ from mathematics as a whole. Its full of wistful fantasies about how awesome it would have been if things could only...
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