The Math/Stats Colloquium is excited, nay, pumped, to have our own Marion Campisi talking about “Neighbors of Knots in the Gordian Graph”. Knot theory considers embeddings of circles up to isotopy. One simple way to transform a knot is to allow the knot to pass through itself, which is called a crossing change. Understanding the effect of crossing changes on knots is a central endeavor of knot theory. For example, each knot can be transformed into the unknot (a knot isotopic to the standardly embedded circle) by changing crossings, but the minimal number of crossing changes needed is poorly understood. In this talk we show that there exist arbitrarily complicated knots which can be transformed into the unknot via a single crossing change.
Background: Basic familiarity with topology is beneficial, but not required.
- Date: Wed Oct 07
- Time: 3-3:50pm
- Room: MH320
- Snacks: 2:30pm in MH331B
For more information, click here to see the full flyer, suitable for printing and posting.
Hope to see you there!
Upcoming events:
- Wed Oct 14: Frank Sottile, Texas A&M
“Some algebraic geometry in applications” - Wed Oct 21: Federico Ardila, SFSU
TBA