The most interesting thing I learned this week was about Conway’s zero irrelevancy proof. I thought it was astounding how someone thought to classify a surface by unzipping and zipping it up.
I think the best presentation that I observed this week was Grant’s presentation on classifications of surfaces. Grant had images to complement his talk, making the methods he described very easy to follow. The PowerPoint itself was never too busy, making the focus of the talk on what he was verbalizing, which was also really easy to understand.
