Hi everyone,

Things are almost ready to go, but continuing additional complications from numbers have made me decide to push things forward for another week, so the June 13 would be the first lecture.

But it’s looking promising to start by then, because things are coming together.  Here’s where things stand.

discord:

Right now, I think everyone who filled out the googleform before May 30 should now either have been invited to the discord server, or didn’t want further email from me, or had an email address that didn’t work.  That latter group is (lasts names only):  Tandon, Vasaturo, Wellman, Montes, Goodman, Mirocha, Kazdan, Lundström, Rincón Hidalgo, Fonseca.  If you are one of these ten people, or you haven’t gotten a discord invite and you want one and you are filled out the form before May 30, please email me.

I went to the registration page to collect the last few people since May 30, but there were about 140 new names there, so that clinched delaying by a week.  For these 140, I’ll get discord invitations out tomorrow (so don’t write me yet). (If you’re not sure when you signed up and are wondering whether to write to me, wait a day.)

Lots of people have joined the syndicate discord server, and interesting interactions are happening, so this experiment is already a success.

zoom:

I’m trying to figure out if I can arrange for more than 1000 participants at once.  Even if not, it’s not a problem; it will livestream on youtube (perhaps the participants will need a link to watch it, perhaps not).  Soon after, I’ll upload a “final” version to youtube, and also make it available on zoom.  (I think that at least one of those should be accessible to everyone.)

coauthor:  

I’m grateful to Leo Alcock for telling me about this, and showing me how it works.  Leo is taking part in AGITTOC too.  He’s part of a new organization called Open Online Education Project (OOEP).  “We are a coalition of online education projects that among other things, links up education tools with online courses like AGITTOC!”  So this may be part of their experiment too.   Coauthor is by Erik Demaine at MIT.

I mentioned this possibility in an earlier post, and Anand V kindly pointed out that it might be best to just have a server for AGITTOC, and offered to help set it up.  Then I’m super-duper grateful to  Siddharth Mahendraker who is in the process of actually making it work, and talking me through getting a server.  This should be done soon, which is another reason for holding off until next week.  (I’m also going to talk with Erik about coauthor and OOEP folks too.)

other technological tools:

If there are ones that you can’t use because of where you live, and I don’t know about it, please mention it (maybe in the responses below).  I’m already aware that one person can’t use discord, and many people can’t access youtube or googledocs. Some I *think* find it challenging to access wordpress, but this may no longer be true.

participants/guinea pigs, and groups:

The toughest thing is putting everyone into groups.  But now that we have had a chance to meet each other (I’ve looked at everyone’s answers, except for the last batch; you’ve been on discord), I wonder whether something simple can work.  Basically:  those people who arrived in groups stay in those groups.  Those in partial groups (e.g. 2’s or 3’s that want to be part of a larger group) will still stick together.  Everyone (including me) already has an “AGITTOC number) which I assigned just in case it ended up being handy — I can tell everyone their number, and they can go to some page, and quickly answer the following questions — something like — [update Sun. June 7, 2020: the options will be slightly different thanks to suggestions on discord.]

Q1. What’s your AGITTOC number?

Q2.  choose one of these:

  •  I’m not really fluent with writing proofs yet.
  •  I’m happy with proofs, but have not yet become fluent with modules over rings.
  • I know about that, but don’t yet know what a variety or scheme is.
  • I know what a scheme is, but don’t consider myself fluent in them
  • I’m fluent in schemes (but everyone can learn more).
  • Other (explain) [hopefully not too many people]

Q3.  The amount of time and energy I expect to be able to spend is:

  • nearly zero, but put me in a group anyway
  • watch lectures and discuss with others
  • actually work on some problems and write some up
  • try to work on a lot of problems, and write them up

Then I’ll have almost everyone in one of 20 boxes, and can rather bluntly make groups out of people in basically the same box, with size about 10.   That might not be too much work.

I’m going to sleep on it (perhaps until Sunday) and then try it; feel free to suggest variants or something completely different, or to express unhinged enthusiasm.

groupoids.

I also want ~100-120 people, in groups, forming a groupoid, with a field marshal some sort of powerless but beneficent deity associated to it.  I have four field marshals now, and have a few more people in mind to ask.  I need to have a lot of trust in their sense; they needn’t be experts (they aren’t Teaching Assistants), but they should have a lot of mathematical maturity (not the same as age) and wisdom — they will see questions and comments during the talks, and during the weeks, and pass on to me things they think are potentially interesting — so one of their roles would be as gatekeeper.  I’m not going to ask if any of you are interested or willing — that seems the wrong question to ask.  Instead, if you know of other people here who you think would be great at this (and hopefully potentially convinceable) please let me know (eg by email).  But please don’t be offended if I don’t follow your advice — for simplicity I’ll deliberately bias myself towards people I already know.    (Please make suggestions in the next couple of days — the people you nominate can always say no!)

That’s it for the substance of this post.

Less substantive things, to keep you in the loop:

I already have a reasonably fleshed out idea of what the first few lectures might look like, but I’ll play it by ear, because this group is very diverse.

And a reminder of the principles of this experiment:  this should be something where many people (hopefully a significant minority of people starting) can learn something.  They shouldn’t be passively watching, so the structure should be built so that there is a natural pressure to be engaged — talking with others, doing problems, writing them down, looking over others’ work.  Peer accountability is good.  Small groups where people can get to know each other are good.  This should be free to participants, because people are taking part from many different places.  It should be as easy as possible for me (so I’ll always prefer to do something that deals with ten people rather than one that deals with one).

Perhaps this will trifurcate into different streams.

Jarod Alper offered to lecture too, which made me realize that I can give myself a break some weeks, which would give me some chance to reenergize periodically.

Okay, I’m really tired, so I’ll call it a night…