Speaker:  Ed Swartz, Cornell University
Title: Four ways
Time: 2:30 PM, Monday, December 3, 2018
Place:  Malott 206

Abstract: What are the `simplest' manifolds? One of many points of view for this problem is to ask which manifolds require the fewest faces to triangulate given some inherent topological properties. Over the last 15 years a consensus has built up about what a `lower bound conjecture' for triangulations of manifolds without boundary should look like. For manifolds with boundary there are now four different ways of approaching the problem. We will explain the situation for manifolds without boundary and the four different approaches for manifolds with boundary. The most recent is joint work with Isabella Novik.