What are… loops and the fundamental group?

This page hosts information on Dror Atariah's talk "What is.. loops and the fundamental group?" at the WhatIsSeminar.

Abstract

In this talk I will introduce an important tool for studying topological spaces. We will see how loops can characterize spaces, and define the fundamental group of a topological space.

Video

A video with integrated slides can be found on http://www.scivee.tv/node/8615

Comments

I found the talk clear, thorough, and well executed. It certainly answered the question "What is the fundamental group" and probably did a good job of preparing for the BMS talk next Friday.

However, my feeling was that a number of the listeners (including myself) were already familiar with the concepts of the talk. For these listeners, I think it would have been excellent had you been able to maybe mention a thing or two that isn't standard knowledge from topology I. I don't mean that you should have changed the general format of the talk to make it more advanced; I think it just would have been great to add a couple of more advanced remarks on the side. -Nathan

-- ilten@PCPOOL/MI/FU-BERLIN.DE - 21 Nov 2008