Abstract. Reporting on joint work with Roland van der Veen, I'll tell you some stories about $\rho_1$, an easy to define, strong, fast to compute, homomorphic, and well-connected knot invariant. $\rho_1$ was first studied by Rozansky and Overbay, it is dominated by the coloured Jones polynomial (but it isn't lesser!), it has far-reaching generalizations, and I wish I understood it.
URL: http://drorbn.net/in24.
Links: AKT ap APAI AQDW DoPeGDO Dogma FDA Ov Scha SolvApp
Talk Video
(for the version given in Oaxaca;
also at YouTube
and at @BIRS).
After-talk writeup (for the version given in Nara): NaraTalkSummary.pdf.
Sources: pensieve.
Abstract. Following a general discussion of the computation of zombians of unfinished columbaria (with examples), I will tell you about my recent joint work with Jessica Liu on what we feel is the "textbook" extension of knot signatures to tangles, which for unknown reasons, is not in any of the textbooks that we know.
URL: http://drorbn.net/in24.
Talk Video
(version given at Geneva, also on YouTube).
Sources: pensieve.