Author Archives: Persiflage

You are welcome, Northwestern junior faculty

Posted on March 27, 2020 by Persiflage

Nobody has even accused Persiflage of being afraid to speak truth to power. After Chicago made their announcement that they were extending tenure by one year for all (qualified) faculty, I thought that, as a good local citizen of Evanston, … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

More on Lehmer’s Conjecture

Posted on March 21, 2020 by Persiflage

Lehmer said it was a “natural question” whether there existed an integer such that \(\tau(n)=0\) or not. I’ve wondered a little bit recently about how reasonable this is. (See this post.) The historical context is presumably related to the fact … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

The Hausdorff Trimester has been indefinitely postponed

Posted on March 18, 2020 by Persiflage

I’m not sure if this is 100% official yet, but the Hausdorff Trimester scheduled for this summer has been (unsurprisingly) postponed. This is probably no great surprise to many of you. We have hopes to reschedule it again (perhaps for … Continue reading →

Posted in Mathematics | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

NSF Proposal, Graduate Fellowship Edition

Posted on March 17, 2020 by Persiflage

Note: I feel as a service to the number theory entertainment complex that I should blog more often in these times, even if it means being less coherent than usual. I might even try to get a few guest posts … Continue reading →

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The Arbeitsgemeinschaft has been indefinitely postponed

Posted on March 11, 2020 by Persiflage

An update on the last post: As you probably already know by now if you are a participant, the Arbeitsgemeinschaft has been indefinitely postponed. The recommendation to do so was made by the organizers as universities rapidly began to recommend … Continue reading →

Posted in Mathematics, Travel | Tagged | 5 Comments

Conferences New and Old: Coronavirus Edition

Posted on March 7, 2020 by Persiflage

A number of people have asked me whether the various conferences and workshops I am organizing this summer are still running. I thought I would have a blogpost containing all the current information, which I can update when and if … Continue reading →

Posted in Travel | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Counting solutions to a_p = λ, Part II

Posted on March 3, 2020 by Persiflage

This is a sequel to this post where the problem of counting eigenforms with \(a_p = \lambda\) and \(\lambda \ne 0\) was considered. Here we report on recent progress in the case \(\lambda = 0\). It is a somewhat notorious … Continue reading →

Posted in Mathematics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Vale instantchess.com

Posted on February 27, 2020 by Persiflage

One of the few time wasting activities I still indulge in is speed chess. (1 minute per player for the entire game is the slowest time control I play online.) There are a number of excellent free online sites available, … Continue reading →

Posted in Chess | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Vesselin Dimitrov on Schinzel–Zassenhaus

Posted on February 10, 2020 by Persiflage

Suppose that \(P(x) \in \mathbf{Z}[x]\) is a monic polynomial. A well-known argument of Kronecker proves that if every complex root of \(P(x)\) has absolute value at most 1, then \(P(x)\) is cyclotomic. It trivially follows that, for a non-cyclotomic polynomial, … Continue reading →

Posted in Mathematics | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Job Dedication

Posted on January 25, 2020 by Persiflage

Earlier last quarter, I had suffered a fairly poor night from some sort of stomach bug. Unfortunately, I made the ill-advised decision not to cancel my classes and went to work, which involves driving from Evanston to Hyde Park. Things … Continue reading →

Posted in Travel, Waffle | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment