Graduate Student Colloquium
Edgar A. Bering IV
UIC
Expected Behaviors of 3-Manifolds
Abstract: Recent advances in 3-manifold theory have settled the conjectural picture proposed by Bill Thurston in the 1980's, however these resolutions have a common theme: they tend
not to be effective. For example, Ian Agol's resolution of the Virtual Haken Conjecture is purely existential; every 3-manifold has a finite-index cover that is ``sufficiently large'',
but there are no known bounds on this index in terms of the starting manifold. In this talk we will review some of the history of the result and then discuss recent work in
understanding 3-manifolds and their covers statistically, concluding with some open problems in this direction. The talk will aim to be self contained and broadly accessible.
Refreshments will be served.
Thursday May 1, 2014 at 4:15 PM in SEO 636