Aims

The aim of this seminar is to stimulate personal research of the students by discovering actively some mathematical subject that is usually not treated in other courses. Students are asked to present the result of their own work (or of joint work, if they prefer) and to provoke reflection and discussion among the participants.

Main themes

The choice of the subject is left to the teacher, but he is asked to take care of the motivations of the participants.

Content and teaching methods

n 2000-2001, the subject matter was the discovery of elementary facts about the structure of finite groups, with particular emphasis on transformation groups arising from geometry, such as cristallographic groups.
In 2001-2002, the choosen subject was an introduction to the basic notions of category theory (including limits, adjoints, presheaves and even elementary toposes), with emphasis on various examples from set theory, algebra and first-order logic.

Other credits in programs