What is … an elliptic curve? / Basic notions in algebraic and arithmetic geometry

As an excpetion to the regular seminar, there are going be two 30min preparatory talks by Anna Pippich and Fritz Hörmann.

They will begin at 12pm at the Urania. As usual, there will be tea beforehand.

Comments

I should have done this sooner, as my memory of the talks has slightly faded.

Both talks were clearly well prepared and both speakers seemed to know the subject matter they were talking about. I found the talk on elliptic curves to be well presented; I felt that the presentation of the talk on classical algebraic geometry could have been better. In particular, I didn't have the feeling that Fritz was engaging with the audience very well. It seemed to me that the talk would have been much more successful had you looked less in your notes and more at the audience.

I think another big problem was timing: as soon as the clock struck one, many in the audience were probably thinking "Well, it's about time for tea," and no longer focused on the talk. I realize that you probably wanted to cover all the points outlined by Rapaport, but this is a very difficult thing to do in two 30 minute talks. I think it might have been better to restrict to a slightly smaller amount of material and cover it more in depth and in a more relaxed manner. I think that it is probably a bad idea in general to have the "preparation" talks right before the BMS Friday lecture; much better is preparation a week or two in advance. Fortunately, I believe that this will be the case in the future.

I also think that the talks could have possibly been better integrated. This would maybe have eliminated a couple of confusions in the first talk, like, "What does it mean for points on an elliptic curve to be colinear?"

Aside from the (hopefully constructive?) criticism, thank you for taking the time to prepare your talks for us.

--Nathan