Category Archives: Uncategorized

Are business schools intellectually bankrupt? (Part Two)

Posted on September 24, 2026 by Persiflage

Nicholas Polson, a professor of Finance at Booth (Chicago’s business school) in the news for authoring 258 papers in 2026. It turns out that I had an interesting interaction with Polson in this past which I never blogged about. Instead, … Continue reading →

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An even PSL_2(F_23) Galois extension

Posted on September 20, 2026 by Persiflage

I was wrong! I have said on a number of occasions that my favourite family of groups for the inverse Galois problem is \(G=\mathrm{SL}_2(\mathbf{F}_p)\). This is still true, and the reason is still the same; the fact that \(G\) has … Continue reading →

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Google Alert!

Posted on August 20, 2026 by Persiflage

I have my google alert set for the phrase “Galois Representations”. Every six months or so it pops up with a suggestion, and I can’t quite work out what algorithm is using. Here was today’s breaking news: On the conductors … Continue reading →

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The inverse Galois challenge

Posted on June 19, 2026 by Persiflage

I learnt a few days ago about the following AI challenge: find polynomials with Galois group \(G\) for each of the transitive subgroups of \(S_{24}\), with each of the possible signatures \((r_1,r_2)\) with \(r_1 + 2r_2 = 24\) where \(r_1\) … Continue reading →

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En Passant: Mailbox and Tate 100

Posted on April 22, 2025 by Persiflage

I lost the key to my office mailbox about a year ago (probably more), and just had it replaced. So today I got to enjoy the bounty of new mail, which consists of: A request from the AMS for money, … 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 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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Persiflage, 2012-2024

Posted on July 23, 2024 by Persiflage

No, not a eulogy! I’ve been a bit concerned for a while about how stable wordpress is as a website — various plugins are always updating on their own, and I have sometimes noticed that old blog posts do not … Continue reading →

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ArXiv x 3

Posted on March 4, 2022 by Persiflage

Three recent arXiv preprints this week caught my interest and seemed worth mentioning here. The first is a paper by Oscar Randal-Williams, which considers (among other things) the cohomology of congruence subgroups of \(\mathrm{SL}_N(\mathbf{Z})\) in the stable range. This is … Continue reading →

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