Hunter Liu's Website

Seminars and Talks

Professor Ravi Vakil at Stanford gives (in my opinion) incredibly helpful advice for students. One piece of advice that I’m trying to live by is to attend more seminars and talks, even when the depth of the math in the talk is out of reach. In addition, he has an exercise called The “Three Things” Exercise for getting something out of a talk.

I still have a baby brain in math, so this exercise helps me identify statements, theorems, techniques, or ideas in talks that are just outside of my own knowledge.

Something that I’ve found productive not only in talks but also in lectures, office hours, and classes in general is revisiting troublesome statements, definitions, steps in proof, or other sources of confusion. Sometimes, these sources of confusion are errors that I have made in transcribing something that the speaker or lecturer has said. Sometimes, it’s just because the math is way out of reach. Often times, however, these sources of confusion arise from a gap in my knowledge and understanding. Going back and rectifying them, at least for me, helps me identify these gaps in my knowledge, and I’m usually able to fill them in without too much trouble.

For now, that’s the purpose of these pages: to identify that differential growth that comes with each talk. Most of the time, I walk away feeling as though most of the content has zipped over my head, and it’s a good reminder for myself that I’m still learning at least a little bit here and there.

I want to add that some talks are better than others, and some talks have more room to improve than others. However, I don’t think it’s constructive or fair for me to put a criticism as a takeaway! You can still learn something from a bad talk.