Author Archives: Persiflage

It wasn’t me!

Posted on March 13, 2025 by Persiflage

I have a gentleman’s bet with another number theorist that I will be able to write a nonsense paper and get it published in respectable journal. To be honest, I barely have enough time to write actual papers let alone … Continue reading →

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A new blog

Posted on March 3, 2025 by Persiflage

For various hosting reasons, I have moved my old blog back to galoisrepresentations.org rather than galoisrepresentations.com. The forwarding link will die at some point so please update your links accordingly! Hopefully the previous content is still operational but let me … Continue reading →

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The Poincaré homology sphere

Posted on January 5, 2025 by Persiflage

This illusion (from the Chicago museum of illusions, and duplicated, I believe, in other similar museums in other cities) “almost” appears to give a tiling of \(\mathbf{R}^3\) by regular dodecahedra, which for a number of reasons is not possible. (It … Continue reading →

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It’s not a Lemma, it’s a Proposition!

Posted on December 14, 2024 by Persiflage

Congratulations to Ken for winning the the Steele prize. I first met Ken on the Hearst mining circle. It was September of 1997, during the time I was applying for graduate schools. I was visiting Danny on the way to … Continue reading →

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“Fields of definition”

Posted on December 7, 2024 by Persiflage

Can you help settle a disagreement? This is a debate about notation I am having with a colleague; I will try to present it without prejudice (and probably fail). Let \(G\) be a group, and let \(V\) be a finite … Continue reading →

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Giving a good mathematics talk

Posted on November 2, 2024 by Persiflage

Last week, Tadashi Tokieda came to Chicago to give a colloquium. If you have seen him speak, you will not be surprised to learn that it was absolutely delightful talk. I carried the talk around with me in my mind … Continue reading →

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The Arthurian Legend

Posted on October 18, 2024 by Persiflage

Some time back, Kevin Buzzard (friend of the blog!) gave a series of talks in which he criticized certain aspects of the mathematical culture when it came to accepting proof. In addition to obvious targets like the classification of finite … Continue reading →

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Walter Neumann

Posted on September 30, 2024 by Persiflage

I recently learnt the sad news that Walter Neumann just passed away. Although I don’t think I have seen him in person for over 25 years, Walter was a pretty significant influence in my mathematical life. Here are some of … Continue reading →

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Am I taking students?

Posted on September 27, 2024 by Persiflage

I receive many (many) unsolicited emails about the possibility of working with me at grad school. Some are clearly bulk emails sent no doubt to a large number of professors. Some are customized to include phrases like “I was really … Continue reading →

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Not quite what I meant

Posted on August 15, 2024 by Persiflage

Weibo Fu wrote an interesting paper on upper bounds for spaces of Bianchi modular forms, pushing previous results of Simon Marshall and Yongquan Hu to get more or less optimal results in the weight aspect. More generally, for any number … Continue reading →

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