Formal Geometry in Bordism Theory, Spring 2016

This course covers various appearances of formal geometry surrounding bordism theories in stable homotopy.

Our regular meeting times are listed below, and I have also posted my office hours. As this is a graduate topics class, there is little other administrative information. In particular, there is no scheduled homework or exams.

I will be updating the course notes, linked below, throughout the semester. If you want to make edits for yourself, the first thing you should do is register for an account and tell me your username, so that I can grant you access to the repository. Once you’ve done that, you should go to http://desktop.github.com (if you’re using Windows or Mac OS X), download the application they offer there, and point it toward the repository URL:

https://github.com/ecpeterson/FormalGeomNotes.git

That will “clone” a copy of the notes. This is different from just downloading a copy of the notes as a .zip — “cloning” remembers that the notes came from GitHub’s server. From there, there are three useful actions the app can take:

• “pull”, which downloads new changes from the server, updating your local copy. (In GitHub Desktop, you can accomplish this by pushing the 'Sync' button in the top-right of the window.)
• “commit”, which creates a sort of checkpoint among changes you’ve made.
• “push”, which shares your commit checkpoints with the server (so, in turn, everyone else can see them). (In GitHub Desktop, you can also accomplish this by pushing the 'Sync' button in the top-right of the window.)

I’m happy to play tech support, should you run into trouble. :) In any case, first register and send me your username.