HEGL Community Seminar SoSe24

The Seminar takes place on Mondays at 14:15, usually in Seminar Room C of the Mathematikon.

Schedule

22.04.2024

Speaker: Constanza Rojas-Molina (Université de Cergy-Pontoise)

Title: Sketchnotes, comics, and mathematics. New and old formats for maths communication.
Time: 14:15

Abstract:

In this talk I share my experience, as a mathematician and illustrator, doing maths communication using two graphic formats: sketchnotes and comics. They’re both visual languages to express ideas, which from my point of view, makes them similar to the mathematical language. While sketchnotes are immediate by nature and concern more ideas and their structure, comics allow for storytelling and context. In my work the dividing line between these two formats blurs, to adapt to mathematical content. 

Sketchnotes, or visual note-taking, is a way of recording thoughts using drawings, symbols, and text following a certain structure or hierarchy. Sketchnotes, and its live version “graphic recording”, has had quite a boom in the past decade thanks to the work of Mike Rohde, UX designer and sketchnote expert. While this trend is international, Germany stands out for having a booming community of sketchnoters and graphic recorders.  In recent years I’ve explored the possibilities of using this format to communicate math and to teach. In this talk I report on the #Noethember  and #mathyear initiatives and the book La Gran Aventura del Conocimiento (Ed. Planeta Chile, 2023) written with mathematician and didactician Leslie Jimenez Palma (U. Chile). 

Together with sketchnotes, I’ve explored more recently the format of comics and zines to do outreach. I report on a recent collaboration with mathematician Alberto Mercado (U. Federico Santa Maria,Chile) a comic about the Collatz Conjecture, available at www.acip.cl/comic/.

06.05.2024

Speaker: Hugo Parlier (Université du Luxembourg)

Title: Crossing lines: from graphs to surfaces
Time: 14:15

Abstract:

The interplay between graph theory and surface topology has become a classic topic in both combinatorics and geometric topology. This talk will be about surprising links via moduli theory, which is originally about measuring distances between surface shapes.

From curve counting, to combinatorics and hyperbolic geometry, the talk aims to show how graphs can help us understand moduli spaces and how moduli spaces can help us understand graphs. This will include recent progress on generalizing the so-called crossing lemma, which helps quantify how far from being planar a graph can be in terms of its number of edges and vertices.

03.06.2024

Speaker: Aurélien Alvarez (ENS Lyon)

Title: TBA
Time: 14:15

Abstract: TBA