Category Archives: Mathematics

Mazur 80

Posted on June 10, 2018 by Persiflage

Last week I was in Cambridge for Barry’s 80th birthday conference. If you are wondering why it took so long for Barry to get a birthday conference, that’s probably because you didn’t know that there was *also* a 60th birthday … Continue reading →

Posted in Mathematics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 17 Comments

Upcoming Attractions

Posted on May 11, 2018 by Persiflage

There’s a packed schedule for graduate classes at Chicago next Fall: Ngô Bảo Châu on automorphic forms (TueTh 11:00-12:30), Akhil Mathew on perfectoid spaces (MWF 12:30-1:30), and George Boxer and me on (higher) Hida theory (MW 1:30-3:00). Strap yourself in! … Continue reading →

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

Nobody Cares About Your Paper

Posted on May 6, 2018 by Persiflage

I handle quite a few papers (though far fewer than other editors I know) as an associate editor at Mathematische Zeitschrift. Since the acceptance rate at Math Zeit is something in the neighbourhood of 20%, there are certainly good papers … Continue reading →

Posted in Mathematics, Politics, Rant | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Chicago Seminar Roundup

Posted on April 28, 2018 by Persiflage

Here are two questions I had about the past two number theory seminars. I haven’t had the opportunity to think about either of them seriously, so they may be easy (or more likely stupid). Anthony Várilly-Alvarado: Honestly, I’ve never quite … Continue reading →

Posted in Mathematics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

The boundaries of Sato-Tate, part I

Posted on April 8, 2018 by Persiflage

A caveat: the following questions are so obvious that they have surely been asked elsewhere, and possibly given much more convincing answers. References welcome! The Sato-Tate conjecture implies that the normalized trace of Frobenius \(b_p \in [-2,2]\) for a non-CM … Continue reading →

Posted in Mathematics | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

The paramodular conjecture is false for trivial reasons

Posted on January 15, 2018 by Persiflage

(This is part of a series of occasional posts discussing results and observations in my joint paper with Boxer, Gee, and Pilloni mentioned here.) Brumer and Kramer made a conjecture positing a bijection between isogeny classes of abelian surfaces \(A/\mathbf{Q}\) … Continue reading →

Posted in Mathematics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Hiring Season

Posted on January 7, 2018 by Persiflage

Lizard 1: Wait, explain again why we bury our young in the sand and thereby place them into mortal peril? Lizard 2: So they develop character! If it was good enough for me, it’s good enough for them. (Feel free … Continue reading →

Posted in Mathematics, Politics, Rant, Travel | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Abandonware

Posted on December 25, 2017 by Persiflage

For a young mathematician, there is a lot of pressure to publish (or perish). The role of for-profit academic publishing is to publish large amounts of crappy mathematics papers, make a lot of money, but at least in return grant … Continue reading →

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

The ABC conjecture has (still) not been proved

Posted on December 17, 2017 by Persiflage

The ABC conjecture has (still) not been proved. Five years ago, Cathy O’Neil laid out a perfectly cogent case for why the (at that point recent) claims by Shinichi Mochizuki should not (yet) be regarded as constituting a proof of … Continue reading →

Posted in Mathematics, Politics, Rant | Tagged , , | 34 Comments

Graduation Day

Posted on November 26, 2017 by Persiflage

This last summer, I undertook my last official activity as a faculty member at Northwestern University, namely, graduation day! (I had a 0% courtesy appointment for two years until my last Northwestern students graduated.) Here I am with four of … Continue reading →

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