How can we use travel-journaling to study some highly abstract and highly complicated mathematical machinery? Can we get anything out of such an analogy? In this post we do just that, study the homotopy hypothesis and infinity groupoids through the lens of a travel ledger.
A couple weeks ago I held a talk on introductory higher category theory. Most of the talk was based upon thing we already have discussed on this blog, such as the strict $2$-category $Cat$, bicategories, and why strictness fails for the category of topological spaces. The inly thing I talked about which I haven’t yet featured on this blog is the notion of quasi-categories, so I though that I would do that today....
A litmus test is a question asked in politics to a potential candidate for high office in which the answer determines if the person gets nominated or not. If a person or a committee holds the power of nominating candidates, they can use that power to make sure that a potential candidate holds their view on a certain matter. So, what does this have to do with mathematics, or especially with homotopy theory?...