Of all the week one presentations, I enjoyed Siddhartha’s presentation the most, precisely because clear motivation was provided the content (for the most part).
The sensor network coverage problem seems much more interesting now that I’ve had some of the specifics of the problem presented: in particular, figuring out the covered regions not knowing where the nodes are. And the solution, if I understood correctly, seemed sneaky; showing that one complex fit “in-between” two, and bypassing it in favor of the other two, which are easier to compute. And seeing the simulation images was pretty cool, even if I’m only reacting to seeing images instead of words/symbols.
gbarkle
April 15, 2018 — 23:59
That sounds like a cool presentation. I agree that hearing about specifics makes a lot of problems more interesting; while general theories are great, sometimes it can take something specific to really spark an interest in a topic. And pictures are worth a thousand words. Hope to see more great presentations next week.
jedunay
April 15, 2018 — 23:57
Yes, that was a tricky way to be solving the problem. This talk did seem to lend itself to more pictures than the other talks which seemed more abstract.
Philipp
April 15, 2018 — 23:55
Sorry, posted in a wrong place.
Philipp
April 15, 2018 — 23:55
Gregory Johnson’s presentations explored very advanced and interesting topics, and has inspired me to learn more physics, very interesting information on construction of gauges. Though I still don’t have physical intuition, looking up into things I wrote in my notes, made me learn about mathematical meanings of principle and fiber bundles, construction of gauge connections and their relation to Lie curvature 2-forms, so it really expanded my interests into intersection of physics and topology/differential geometry. Also the fact about entanglement being related to 7th homotopy group of a 4-sphere being Z blew me away.