Category Archives: Mathematics

Update on Sato-Tate for abelian surfaces

Posted on July 19, 2018 by Persiflage

Various people have asked me for an update on the status of the Sato-Tate conjecture for abelian surfaces in light of recent advances in modularity lifting theorems. My student Noah Taylor has exactly been undertaking this task, and this post … Continue reading →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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