most recent 30 from http://mathoverflow.net 2013-06-18T04:35:54Z http://mathoverflow.net/feeds/user/8888 http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/rdf http://mathoverflow.net/questions/37115/why-arent-representations-of-monoids-studied-so-much/37177#37177 tgh 2010-08-30T16:44:35Z 2010-08-30T16:44:35Z

<p>A short note (relevant to Jim's) is that representations of very specific families of monoids do get studied quite a bit. In studying random walks on groups (which is where I first really encountered representations), for example, representations of the whole group are used to make very precise calculations, and people are starting to use representations of monoids to make these sorts of calculations for less nice walks. </p> <p>As pointed out, this is generally quite a bit harder to do. Quick googling gave <a href="http://mathstat.carleton.ca/~bsteinbg/pubs/mobius2.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://mathstat.carleton.ca/~bsteinbg/pubs/mobius2.pdf</a>, but it seems to give less than a perfect analogue (though he does seem to do lots of more standard work in representations of monoids). There are other examples that make this look more like the classical group case, but unfortunately I can't find any at the moment...</p>