Category Archives: Mathematics

The Ramanujan Machine is all hype

Posted on July 17, 2019 by Persiflage

Edit (17/02/21) I changed the title of this post which was unnecessarily incendiary. There’s a lot that I like about how mathematics operates as a social discipline. We have a great respect for the history of the subject, which in … Continue reading →

Posted in Mathematics, Rant | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 15 Comments

En Passant V

Posted on July 7, 2019 by Persiflage

(warning: today’s persiflage comes with possible extra snark due to sleep deprivation) The Ramanujan Machine: I learnt from John Baez on twitter about The Ramanujan Machine, a project designed to “help reveal [the] underlying structure” of the “fundamental constants” of … Continue reading →

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The stable cohomology of SL(F_p)

Posted on June 19, 2019 by Persiflage

Back by popular demand: an actual mathematics post! Today’s problem is the following: compute the cohomology of \(\mathrm{SL}(\mathbf{F}_p)\) for a (mod-p) algebraic representation. Step 0 is to say what this problem actually is. It makes sense to talk about certain … Continue reading →

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

Harris versus Buzzard

Posted on June 12, 2019 by Persiflage

Michael Harris has a new article at quanta. The piece is (uncharacteristically?) coy, referring to the laments of two logicians without divulging either their names or their precise objections, making oblique references to a cabal of 10 mathematicians meeting at … Continue reading →

Posted in Mathematics | Tagged , , , , , , , | 24 Comments

Referee Requests

Posted on April 11, 2019 by Persiflage

################################################### From: Mathematics Editorial Office Subject: [Mathematics] Review Request Date: December 26, 2018 at 7:43:31 AM CST Dear Professor Calegari, Happy new year. We have received the following manuscript to be considered for publication in Mathematics (http://www.mdpi.com/journal/mathematics/) and kindly invite … Continue reading →

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

The Journal of Number Theory experiment

Posted on April 4, 2019 by Persiflage

The Journal of Number Theory has been (for some time) the standard “specialist” journal for number theory papers. By that, I mean it was a home for reasonably good number theory papers which were not (necessarily) good enough for some … Continue reading →

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Dembélé on Abelian Surfaces with good reduction everywhere

Posted on March 27, 2019 by Persiflage

New paper by Dembélé (friend of the blog) on abelian surfaces with good reduction everywhere (or rather, the lack of them for many real quadratic fields of small discriminant). I have nothing profound to say about the question of which … Continue reading →

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Levi L. Conant Prize

Posted on March 11, 2019 by Persiflage

Nominations for the 2020 Levi L. Conant Prize are now open! To quote directly from the relevant blurb, This prize was established in 2000 in honor of Levi L. Conant to recognize the best expository paper published in either the … Continue reading →

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Jean-Marc Fontaine, 1944-2019

Posted on March 4, 2019 by Persiflage

The results which generate the most buzz in mathematics are usually those which can be expressed in an elementary (or at least pithy) way to a general mathematical audience. It is certainly true that such results may be profound (see … Continue reading →

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Tips for new postdocs

Posted on January 20, 2019 by Persiflage

In my role as junior hiring chair, I’ve been thinking a little bit about how a (R1) institution can best serve its postdocs. Many find the transition from graduate student life to being a postdoc somewhat of a rude shock. … Continue reading →

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