Tag Archives: study group

Week Four Meeting: §4.1 – §4.2

This week’s Google Hangout (RSVP here) will cover problems/questions from week four of the syllabus:

  • 4.1 Monoids
  • 4.2 Groups

If you’re joining us in progress, please feel free to add in any questions you might have about previous material as well – it’s never too late to join us all.

Those who aren’t able to jump into the hangout (due to hardware issues or the 10 person limit) are encouraged to chat within the hangout IM and follow along with the live stream. If you’re stuck and can’t make it, it will be archived on our YouTube Channel for later consumption.

Participant count

As of this week there are now 32 participants in the group! Thanks to everyone who is participating, as I expected we’d have only about 4 when we started this whole thing.

Week One Meeting: §1.1 – §2.2

Week One’s Archived Video

For those who may have missed it, the video recording of our first meeting follows below.

I would usually intimate that some may also use it for review, but it primarily contains a brief overview of some of the resources available along with some administrative material overview. It’s much more scant on actual mathematics than I hope/expect they will generally be in the future.

Administrative Note

It appears that we had over 20 people for the first session, though we’re limited to 10 active participants who have access to streaming their audio/video into the session. Apologies to others who weren’t able to more actively participate.

Keep in mind that one should hopefully still be able to add additional material via the hangouts IM functionality or by the Q&A functionality (see notes below). For those who are in the audio/video portion of the hangout, you’ll be expected to participate and contribute to the discussion.s (Perhaps you might present a problem/solution to the group?)

If you don’t have much to say (or don’t have the proper equipment (webcam or microphone)), kindly “step” out of the broadcast and watch the live stream for a while and allow others to have a shot as well. Perhaps we might arrange some method for people to rotate in/out on a regular basis? Suggestions for this are welcome.

Those not actively participating in the session can always watch the live stream through the group’s YouTube channel.

I did notice one or two interesting side-conversations taking place within the hangout’s chat (though I’m at a loss to know if/where it was archived). At present, we’ve got more than enough time in these sessions that instead of typing respondents are more than welcome to bring up their commentary to supply everyone with a more fleshed out conversation. (There does seem to be a difference between the IM/chat within the main window of the stream and that from the separate hangouts window, which is archived and accessible after the fact, so perhaps using the latter is preferable for archive purposes, as well as being more accessible to the balance of the group.

Questions

Google Hangouts has a functionality known as Q&A to which one can write in questions that the group can work on answering during the session.  To access it at any time, go to the page for the hangout, click on the “play button” in the video portion of the screen, then in the top right hand corner of the “video” (which obviously won’t be playing until the set meeting time) click on the 3×3 square grid (just to the right of the question mark icon), and choose the Q&A pop up option. This will open up a bar on the right hand side of the screen where one can click on ask a new question at the bottom to post their question.

You can also always register at the group’s main site and post your questions there for everyone to work on/answer via the comments section during the week

Coming Up: Week Two §2.3-§3.2

This week’s Google Hangout (RSVP here) will cover problems/questions from week two of the syllabus:

  •  2.3 Ologs
  • 3 Fundamental Considerations in Set
  • 3.1 Products and coproducts
  • 3.2 Finite limits in Set

Everyone will generally be expected to have read the appropriate sections and bring their questions/issues so the group can attempt to cover and clarify any issues anyone may be having.

If it helps one or more people to ensure that they’ve got the material down well, I’m sure the group would welcome anyone who might like to present/walk their way through one or more of the problems in the relevant sections – particularly problems whose answers left out some reasonable level of detail. If you’d like to offer to do this, please put a comment in below, so we can schedule some time during the session to accommodate this.

Though we’re off to a “slow” start, things will pick up rapidly as we progress, so please don’t hesitate to ask questions here on the blog, through hangouts, or via anyone’s office hours.

The Category Theory Site Is Now Live

Platform Choice

I’ve made a few posts here [1] [2] about a summer study group for category theory. In an effort to facilitate the growing number of people from various timezones and differing platforms (many have come to us from Google+, Tumblr, Twitter, GoodReads, and friends from Dr. Miller’s class in a private Google Group), I’ve decided it may be easiest to set up something completely separate from all of these so our notes, resources, and any other group contributions can live on to benefit others in the future. Thus I’ve built Category Theory: Summer Study Group 2015 on WordPress.  It will live as a sub-domain of my personal site until I get around to buying a permanent home for it (any suggestions for permanent domain names are welcome).

Registration

We’ve actually had a few people already find the new site and register before I’ve announced it, but for those who haven’t done so yet, please go to our participant registration page and enter your preferred username and email address.  We’ll email you a temporary password which you can change when you login for the first time. Those who want to use their pre-existing WordPress credentials are welcome to do so.

Once you’ve registered, be sure to update your profile (at least include your name) so that others will know a little bit more about you. If you’d like you can also link your WordPress.com account [or sign up for one and then link it] so that you can add a photo and additional details.  To login later, there’s a link hidden in the main menu under “Participants.”

You can also add your details to the form at the bottom of the Participants page to let others know a bit more about you and where you can be reached. Naturally this is optional as I know some have privacy issues. In the notes, please leave your location/timezone so that we can better coordinate schedules/meetings.

Category Theory Blog

Your username/password will allow you to post content directly to the study group’s blog. This can be contributed notes, questions, resources, code, photos, thoughts, etc. related to category theory and related areas of mathematics we’ll be looking at. Initially your posts will be moderated (primarily only to prevent spam), and over time your status will be elevated to allow immediate posting and editing. If you have any questions or need administrative help, I’m easy to find and happy to help if you get into trouble. Most of the interface will hopefully be easy to understand.

For those with questions, please try to read posts as you’re able and feel free to comment with hints and/or solutions.  I’ve created “categories” with the chapter titles from the text we’re using to facilitate sorting/searching. Depending on the need, we can granularize this further as we proceed. There is also the ability to tag posts with additional metadata or upload photos as well.

As appropriate, I’ll take material out of the blog/posts stream and place it into freestanding pages for easier reference in the future. As an example, I’ve already found some material on YouTube and MIT’s Open Course Ware site (Spivak posted his 2013 class using our same text, though it unfortunately doesn’t include video or audio) that may be relevant to many.

For those interested, WordPress supports most basic LaTeX, though I doubt it supports any of the bigger category theory diagramming packages, so feel free to draw out pictures/diagrams, photograph them, and upload them for others to see if necessary.

As an advocate of the open web and owning one’s own data, I highly recommend everyone publish/post their content here as well as to their favorite site/platform of choice as they see fit.

Textbook

In emails and chatter around the web, I haven’t heard any major objections to the proposed textbook so far, so unless there are, I’m assuming that it should serve most of us well. Hopefully everyone has a copy by now (remember there are free versions available) and has begun reading the introductory material.  Those requiring a bit more mathematical rigor and challenge can supplement with additional texts as I’m sure I and many others will. If you’re posting questions to the site about problems/questions from other texts, please either state them explicitly or tag them with the author’s last name as well as the problem/exercise number. (I’ll try to make them all canonical on the back end as we progress, so don’t worry too much if you’re not sure how or what to tag them with.)

Conference Call Tool

At the moment, most people have been fairly open to the three big platforms, though a few on either Linux or Chromebooks don’t have access to be able to install/operate anything but Google Hangouts, so I’m presently proposing that we adopt it for our group. Nearly everyone in the group already has a gmail account, so I don’t expect it to be an undue burden. If you haven’t used it before, please download/install any plugins you may require for your platform in advance of our first “call.”

Meeting Times

I’ve only heard back from a small handful of people on availability so far, but it doesn’t look like it will be difficult to find an appropriate time.  If you haven’t already done so, please fill out the “survey,” so we can determine a good call time for next week. If necessary, we can do additional times to help serve everyone’s needs. We don’t want to leave out any who sincerely want to participate.

Office Hours

As most of the participants are spread over the United States, Europe, and Asia, I’m suggesting that everyone carve out a standing block of time (we can call them “office hours”) that they can use to be available (via Google Hangouts or otherwise) to help out others having difficulty or who have questions. Since there isn’t a “professor” I’m hoping that we can all serve each other as unofficial teaching assistants to get through the process, and having standing office hours may be the easiest way to catch others for help in addition to the web site itself.

Questions? Comments? Snide Remarks?

If you have any questions, or I’ve managed to miss something, please don’t hesitate to make a comment below.  I’m hoping to get enough responses by Friday/Saturday this week to post our first meeting time for next week.

[Editor’s Note: This post was originally posted at BoffoSocko.com]

Category Theory Summer Study Group 2015

[Editor’s note: This post was originally published by Chris Aldrich at BoffoSocko.com]

Syllabus

Initial details for putting  the group together can be found at http://cat.boffosocko.com/2015/05/category-theory-anyone/.

Below is a handful of suggestions and thoughts relating to the study group in terms of platforms to assist us in communicating as well as a general outline for the summer.  I’m only “leading” this in the sense that I put my foot forward first, but I expect and sincerely hope that others will be active leaders and participants as well, so please take the following only as a suggestion, and feel free to add additional thoughts and commentary you feel might help the group.

Primary resources:

General Communication

Since many within the group are already members of the Google Group “Advanced Physics & Math – Los Angeles.” I suggest we use the email list here as a base of communication. I believe the group is still “private” but am happy to invite the handful of participants who aren’t already members. Those actively participating are encouraged to change their settings so that they receive emails from the group either as they’re posted, or in batches once a day.  Those subscribed only once a week or less frequently are likely to miss out on questions, comments, and other matters.

Alternately we might also use the GoodReads.com discussion group within the “Mathematics Students” group. I believe only about three of us so far may already be goodreads members, so this may require more effort for others to join.

If anyone has an alternate platform suggestion for communicating and maintaining resources, I’m happy to entertain it.

I wouldn’t be opposed to setting up a multi-user WordPress site that we could all access and post/cross-post to. Doing this could also allow for use of \LaTeX as well, which may be useful down the line. This would also have the benefit of being open to the public and potentially assisting future students. It also has built-in functionality of notifying everyone of individual posts and updates as they’re entered.

Meetings

I’ll propose a general weekly meeting online via Google Hangouts on a day and time to be determined.  It looks like the majority of respondents are in the Pacific timezone, so perhaps we could shoot for something around 7pm for an hour or so if we do something during weekdays so that East coasters can join without us running too late. If we decide to do something during the weekend, we obviously have a good bit more flexibility.

If we could have everyone start by indicating which days/times absolutely won’t work for them and follow up with their three to four preferred days/times, then we might be able to build a consensus for getting together.

Alternate videoconference options could include Skype, ooVoo, or others, in some part because I know that most participants are already part of the Google ecosystem and know that one or more potential participants is using Google Chromebooks and thus may not be able to use other platforms.  Is anyone not able to use Google Hangouts? If we opt for something else, we want something that is ubiquitous for platform, allows screen sharing, and preferably the ability to record the sessions for those who aren’t present.

Ideally the videoconference meetings will be geared toward an inverted classroom style of work in which it would be supposed that everyone has read the week’s material and made an attempt at a number of problems. We can then bring forward any general or specific conceptual problems people may be having and then work as a group toward solving any problems that anyone in the group may be having difficulty with.

I’ll also suggest that even if we can’t all make a specific date and time, that we might get together in smaller groups to help each other out.  Perhaps everyone could post one or two regular hours during the week as open “office hours” so that smaller groups can discuss problems and help each other out so that we can continue to all make progress as a group.

Primary Textbook

Spivak, David I. Category Theory for the Sciences. (The MIT Press, 2014)

Given the diversity of people in the group and their backgrounds, I’ll suggest Spivak’s text which has a gentle beginning and is geared more toward scientists and non-professional mathematicians, though it seems to come up to speed fairly quickly without requiring a large number of prerequisites.  It also has the benefit of being free as noted below.

The textbook can be purchased directly through most book retailers.  Those looking for cheaper alternatives might find these two versions useful. The HTML version should be exactly in line with the printed one, while the “old version” may not be exactly the same.

Following this, I might suggest we use something like Awody’s text or Leinster’s which are slightly more technical, but still fairly introductory. Those who’d like a more advanced text can certainly supplement by reading portions of those texts as we work our way through the material in Spivak. If all of the group wants a more advanced text, we can certainly do it, but I’d prefer not to scare away any who don’t have a more sophisticated background.

Additional References

Proposed Schedule

The following schedule takes us from now through the end of the summer and covers the entirety of the book.  Hopefully everyone will be able to participate through the end, though some may have additional pressures as the beginning of the Fall  sees the start of other courses. Without much prior experience in the field myself, I’ve generally broken things up to cover about 35 pages a week, though some have slightly more or less.  Many, like me, may feel like the text really doesn’t begin until week three or four as the early chapters provide an introduction and cover basic concepts like sets and functions which I have a feeling most have at least some experience with.  I’ve read through chapter two fairly quickly already myself.  This first easy two week stretch will also give everyone the ability to settle in as well as allow others to continue to join the group before we make significant headway.

If anyone has more experience in the subject and wishes to comment on which sections we may all have more conceptual issues with, please let us know so we can adjust the schedule as necessary.  I suppose we may modify the schedule as needed going forward, though like many of you, I’d like to try to cover as much as we can before the end of the summer.

Week One: May 24 (24 pages)

Administrative tasks

  • Purchase Textbook
  • Decide on best day/time for meeting
  • Decide on platform for meetings: Google Hangouts /Skype /ooVoo /Other
  • 1 A brief history of category theory
  • 1.2 Intention of this book
  • 1.3 What is requested from the student
  • 1.4 Category theory references
  • 2 The Category of Sets 9
  • 2.1 Sets and functions
  • 2.2 Commutative diagrams

Week Two: May 31  (50 pages)

  • 2.3 Ologs
  • 3 Fundamental Considerations in Set 41
  • 3.1 Products and coproducts
  • 3.2 Finite limits in Set

Week Three: June 7 (40 pages)

  • 3.3 Finite colimits in Set
  • 3.4 Other notions in Set

Week Four: June 14 (31 pages)

  • 4 Categories and Functors, Without Admitting It 115
  • 4.1 Monoids
  • 4.2 Groups

Week Five: June 21 (38 pages)

  • 4.3 Graphs
  • 4.4 Orders

Week Six: June 28 (19 pages)

  • 4.5 Databases: schemas and instances

Week Seven: July 5 (36 pages)

  • 5 Basic Category Theory 203
  • 5.1 Categories and functors

Week Eight: July 12 (28 pages)

  • 5.2 Common categories and functors from pure math

Week Nine: July 19 (48 pages)

  • 5.3 Natural transformations
  • 5.4 Categories and schemas are equivalent, Cat » Sch

Week Ten: July 26 (45 pages)

  • 6 Fundamental Considerations of Categories
  • 6.1 Limits and colimits

Week Eleven: August 2 (15 pages)

  • 6.2 Other notions in Cat

Week Twelve: August 9 (26 pages)

  • 7 Categories at Work 375
  • 7.1 Adjoint functors

Week Thirteen: August 16 (32 pages)

  • 7.2 Categories of functors

Week Fourteen: August 23 (19 pages)

  • 7.3 Monads

Week Fifteen: August 30 (23 pages)

  • 7.4 Operads

Additional resources

Requested/Required Responses from participants:

Preferred platform(s) for communications:

Email and/or online discussions

Platform Can use Can’t use Prefer Not to Use
Google Group
WordPress Site
GoodReads Group
Other:

Videoconferences

Platform Can use Can’t use Prefer Not to Use
Google Hangouts
Skype
ooVoo
Other

Dates and times you absolutely CAN’T make for meetings (please include your local time zone):

Weekdays:

Weekends:

 

Dates and times you prefer (please include your local time zone):

Weekdays:

Weekends:

 

One or two time periods during the week you could generally/reliably be available for “office hours”:

 

Any other thoughts on the material above:

  • Textbooks
  • Schedule
  • Additional resources for the group
  • Other

If you’d like to join us, please fill out the contact information and details below based on the material above:

Category Theory Anyone?

[Editor’s note: This post was originally published by Chris Aldrich at BoffoSocko.com]

I’m putting together a study group for an introduction to category theory. Who wants to join me?

Usually in the Fall and Winter, I’m concentrating on studying some semblance of abstract mathematics with a group of 20-30 kamikaze amateurs under the apt tutelage of Dr. Michael Miller through UCLA Extension. Since he doesn’t offer any classes in the Spring or Summer and we haven’t managed to talk Terence Tao into offering something interesting à la Leonard Susskind, we’re all at a loss for what to do with some of our time.

A small cohort of regulars from Miller’s class has recently taken up plowing through Howard Georgi’s Lie Algebras and Particle Physics. Though this seems very diverting to me given our work on Lie groups and algebras in the Fall and Winter, I don’t see any direct or exciting applications to anything more immediate.

Why Not Try Category Theory?

Since the death of Grothendieck I have seen a growing number of references to the area of category theory from a variety of different fronts.

Most notably, for the past year I’ve been more closely following John Baez’s Azimuth Blog which has frequent posts relating to category theory with applications I can directly use in various areas. Unfortunately I couldn’t attend his recent workshop at NIMBioS on Information and Entropy in Biological Systems, which apparently means I missed meeting Tom Leinster who recently released the textbook Basic Category Theory (Cambridge University Press, 2014). [I was already never going to forgive myself after I missed the workshop, but this fact now seems to be additional salt in the wound.]

The straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back was my serendipitously stumbling across Ilyas Khan‘s excellent post “Category Theory – the bedrock of mathematics?” while doing a Google image search for something entirely unrelated to anything remotely similar to mathematics. His discussion and the breadth of links to interesting and intriguing papers and articles within it and several colleagues thanking me for posting about it have finally forced my hand. (I also find myself wishing that he would write on a more formal basis more frequently.)

So over the past week or so, I’ve done some basic subject area searching, and I’ve picked up David I. Spivak’s book Category Theory for the Sciences (The MIT Press, 2014) to begin plowing through it.

Anyone Care to Join Me?

If you’re going to get lost and confused in the high weeds, you may as well have company, right?

-Chris Aldrich

 

Category Theory, Anyone?
Category Theory, Anyone?

Since doing abstract math is always more fun with companions, and I know there are several out there who might be interested in some of the areas which category theory touches on, why don’t you join in?  Over the coming months of Summer, let’s plot a course through the subject.  I’ll suggest Spivak’s book first as it seems to be one of the most basic as well as the broadest out there in terms of applications. (There are also free copies of versions available through arXiv and MIT.) It doesn’t have a huge list of prerequisites either, so a broader category of people might be able to join in as well.

We can have occasional weekly or bi-weekly “meetings” via internet using something like Google Hangouts, Skype, or ooVoo to discuss problems and help each other out as necessary.  Ideally those who join will spend at least 3 hours a week, if not more reading the text and working through problems. Following Spivak, we might try dipping into Leinster, Awody, or Mac Lane.

From the author of Category Theory for the Sciences:

This book is designed to be read by scientists and other people. It has very few mathematical prerequisites; for example, it doesn’t require calculus, linear algebra, or statistics. It starts by reintroducing the basics: What is a set? What is a function between sets?

That said, having a teacher or resident expert will be very helpful. Category theory is a “paradigm shift”—it’s a new way of looking at things. If you progress past the first few chapters, you’ll see that it’s a language for having very big thoughts and making unusually deep analogies.

To make real progress in this book (unless you’re used to reading university-level math books on your own) it will be useful to periodically check your understanding with someone who has some training in the subject. Seek out a math grad student or even a Haskell expert to help you. A growing number of people are learning basic category theory.

In order to really learn this material, a formal teacher or a professor would be best. Encourage your local university math department to offer a course in Category Theory for the Sciences. I can recommend this in good faith, because I went to special efforts to make this book available for free online. An old version of the book exists on the math arXiv, and a new MIT Press-edited version exists in HTML form on their website (see URLs below). That said, the print version, available here on Amazon and elsewhere, is much easier to read, if you want to get serious and you can afford it.

This book contains about 300 exercises and solutions. For those who wish to teach a course in the subject, there are 193 additional exercises and solutions behind a professors-only wall on the MIT Press website (see URL below). You simply have to request access.

To everyone: I hope you enjoy the book, and get a lot out of it!

Old version: arxiv.org/abs/1302.6946
HTML version: mitpress.mit.edu/books/category-theory-sciences

David Spivak, mathematician
in Description of Category Theory for the Sciences on Amazon.com

 

References

Awody, Steve. Category Theory (Oxford Logic Guides, #52). (Oxford University Press, 2nd Edition, 2010)

Lawvere, F. William & Schanuel, Stephen H. Conceptual Mathematics: A First Introduction to Categories. (Cambridge University Press, 2nd Edition, 2009)

Leinster, Tom. Basic Category Theory (Cambridge Studies in Advanced Mathematics, #143). (Cambridge University Press, 2014)

Mac Lane, Saunders. Categories for the Working Mathematician (Graduate Texts in Mathematics, #5). (Springer, 2nd Edition, 1998)

Spivak, David I. Category Theory for the Sciences. (The MIT Press, 2014)

Why write a new textbook on Category Theory, when we already have Mac Lane’s ‘Categories for the Working Mathematician’? Simply put, because Mac Lane’s book is for the working (and aspiring) mathematician. What is needed now, after 30 years of spreading into various other disciplines and places in the curriculum, is a book for everyone else.

-Steve Awody, mathematician
on page iv of Category Theory (Oxford Logic Guides, #52). (Oxford University Press, 2nd Edition, 2010)

If you’d like to join us, please leave a comment below and be sure to include your email address in the comment form so we can touch base regarding details.