Moduli of algebraic and tropical curves

Understand

This is mostly* a non-technical exposition of the joint work arXiv:1212.0373 with Caporaso and Payne.

• Topics include: Moduli of Riemann surfaces / algebraic curves; Deligne-Mumford compactification; Dual graphs and the combinatorics of the compactification; Tropical curves and their moduli; Non-archimedean geometry and comparison.
• * Maybe the last section is technical.