Question

The first thing to say is that this is not the same as the question about interesting mathematical mistakes. I am interested about the type of false beliefs that many intelligent people have while they are learning mathematics, but quickly abandon when their mistake is pointed out -- and also in why they have these beliefs. So in a sense I am interested in commonplace mathematical mistakes.

Let me give a couple of examples to show the kind of thing I mean. When teaching complex analysis, I often come across people who do not realize that they have four incompatible beliefs in their heads simultaneously. These are

(i) a bounded entire function is constant; (ii) sin(z) is a bounded function; (iii) sin(z) is defined and analytic everywhere on C; (iv) sin(z) is not a constant function.

Obviously, it is (ii) that is false. I think probably many people visualize the extension of sin(z) to the complex plane as a doubly periodic function, until someone points out that that is complete nonsense.

A second example is the statement that an open dense subset U of R must be the whole of R. The "proof" of this statement is that every point x is arbitrarily close to a point u in U, so when you put a small neighbourhood about u it must contain x.

Since I'm asking for a good list of examples, and since it's more like a psychological question than a mathematical one, I think I'd better make it community wiki. The properties I'd most like from examples are that they are from reasonably advanced mathematics (so I'm less interested in very elementary false statements like $(x+y)^2=x^2+y^2$, even if they are widely believed) and that the reasons they are found plausible are quite varied.

Answer 1

I'm not sure that anyone holds this as a conscious belief but I have seen a number of students, asked to check that a linear map $\mathbb{R}^k \to \mathbb{R}^{\ell}$ is injective, just check that each of the $k$ basis elements has nonzero image.

Answer 2

Here's one that bugged me from point set topology: "A subnet of a sequence is a subsequence".

See here for the definitions. Using this one gives a great proof that compactness implies sequential compactness in any topological space:

Let $X$ be a compact space. Let $(x_n)$ be a sequence. Since a sequence is a net and it's a basic theorem of point set topology that in a compact topological space, every net has a convergent subnet (proof in the above link), there is a convergent subnet of the sequence $(x_n)$. Using the above belief, the sequence $(x_n)$ has a convergent subsequence and hence $X$ is sequentially compact.

For a counterexample to this "theorem", consider the compact space $X= \lbrace 0,1 \rbrace ^{[0,1]}$ with $f_n(x)$ the $n$th binary digit of $x$.

Answer 3

"Euclid's proof of the infinitude of primes was by contradiction."

That is a very widespread false belief.

"Prime Simplicity", Mathematical Intelligencer, volume 31, number 4, pages 44--52, by me and Catherine Woodgold, debunks it. The proof that Euclid actually wrote is simpler and better than the proof by contradiction often attributed to him.

Answer 4

"Compact implies sequentially compact."

Answer 5

Any subgroup of the direct product $G \times H$ of two groups is of the form $A \times B$, where $A$ is a subgroup of $G$ and $B$ is a subgroup of $H$.

Answer 6

Here's a little factoid: (The Mean-value theorem for functions taking values in $\mathbb{R} ^n$.) If $\alpha : [a,b]\rightarrow \mathbb{R}^n$ is continuous on $[a,b]$ and differentiable on $(a,b)$, then there exists a $c\in (a,b)$ such that $\frac{\alpha (b)-\alpha (a)}{b-a}=\alpha '(c)$

A counterexample is the helix $(\cos (t),\sin (t), t)$ with $a=0$, $b=2\pi$.

Another common misunderstanding (although not mathematical) is about the meaning of the word factoid. In fact, the common mistaken definition of the word factoid is factoidal.

Answer 7

This is (I think) a fairly common misconception about maths that arises in connection with quantum mechanics. Given a Hermitian operator A acting on a finite dimensional Hilbert space H, the eigenvectors of A span H. It's easy to think that the infinite dimensional case is "basically the same", or that any "nice" operator that physicists might want to consider has a spanning eigenspace. However, neither the position nor the momentum operator acting on $L^2(\mathbb{R})$ have any eigenvectors at all, and these are certainly important physical operators! Based on an admittedly fairly small sample size, it seems that it's not uncommon to simultaneously believe that Heisenberg's uncertainty relation holds and that the position and momentum operators possess eigenvectors.

Answer 8

The gamma function is not the only meromorphic function satisfying $$f(z+1)=z f(z),\qquad f(1)=1,$$ with no zeroes and no poles other than the points $z=0,-1,-2\dots$.

In fact, there is a whole bunch of such functions, which, in general, have the form $$f(z)=\exp{(-g(z))}\frac{1}{z\prod\limits_{n=1}^{\infty} \left(1+\frac{z}{m}\right)e^{-z/m}},$$ where $g(z)$ is an entire function such that $$g(z+1)-g(z)=\gamma+2k\pi i,\qquad g(1)=\gamma+2l\pi i,\qquad k,l\in\mathbb Z, $$ ($\gamma$ is Euler's constant). The gamma function corresponds to the simplest choice $g(z)=\gamma z$.

Answer 9

Conditional probability: Let $X$ and $Y$ be real-valued random variables and let $a$ be a constant. Then $$ \mathbb P(X\le Y^2 \mid Y=a) = \mathbb P(X\le a^2) $$ (Here $X\le Y^2$ can be replaced by any statement about $X$ and $Y$.)

Answer 10

Another false belief which I have been asked thrice so far in person is $$\lim_{x \rightarrow 0} \frac{\sin(x)}{x} = 1$$ even if $x$ is in degrees. I was asked by a student a year and half back when I was a TA and by couple of friends in the past 6 months.

Answer 11

Perhaps the most prevalent false belief in math, starting with calculus class, is that the general antiderivative of f(x) = 1/x is F(x) = ln|x| + C. This can be found in innumerable calculus textbooks and is ubiquitous on the Web.

Answer 12

In a finite abelian $p$-group, every cyclic subgroup is contained in a cyclic direct summand.

Added for Gowers: Maybe one reason why people fall into this error goes something like this: First you learn linear algebra, so you know about vector spaces, bases for same, splittings of same. Then you run into elementary abelian $p$-groups and recognize this as a special case of vector spaces. Then you learn the pleasant fact that all finite abelian $p$-groups are direct sums of cyclic $p$-groups, and a corresponding uniqueness statement. You notice that all of the cyclic subgroups of order $p^2$ in $\mathbb Z/p^2\times \mathbb Z/p$ are summands, and if you have a certain sort of inquiring mind then you also notice that not every subgroup of order $p$ is a summand: one of them is contained in a copy of $\mathbb Z/p^2$, in fact in all of those copies of it. Having learned so much, both positive and negative, from the example of $\mathbb Z/p^2\times \mathbb Z/p$, you may think that it shows all the interesting basic features of the general case and overlook the fact that in $\mathbb Z/p^3\times \mathbb Z/p$ there is a $\mathbb Z/p^2$ not contained in any $\mathbb Z/p^3$.

In any case, reputable people sometimes make this blunder; it happened to somebody here at MO just the other day.

Answer 13

In the past I have found myself making this mistake (probably fueled by the fact that you can indeed extend bounded linear operators), and I think it is common in students with a not-deep-enough topology background:

"Let $T$ be a compact topological space, and $X\subset T$ a dense subset. Take $f:X\to\mathbb{C}$ continuous and bounded. Then $f$ can be extended by continuity to all of $T$ ".

The classical counterexample is $T=[0,1]$, $X=(0,1]$, $f(t)=\sin\frac1t$ . It helps to understand how unimaginable the Stone-Cech compactification is.

Answer 14

In his answer above, Martin Brandenburg cited the false belief that every short exact sequence of the form

$$0\rightarrow A\rightarrow A\oplus B\rightarrow B\rightarrow 0$$

must split.

I expect that a far more widespread false belief is that such a sequence can fail to split, when A, B and C are finitely generated modules over a commutative noetherian ring.

(Sketch of relevant proof: We need to show that the identity map in $Hom(A,A)$ lifts to $Hom(A\oplus B,A)$. Thus we need to show exactness on the right of the sequence

$$0\rightarrow Hom(B,A)\rightarrow Hom(A\oplus B,A)\rightarrow Hom(A,A)\rightarrow 0$$

For this, it suffices to localize and then complete at an arbitrary prime $P$. But completion at $P$ is a limit of tensorings with $R/P^n$, so to check exactness we can replace the right-hand $A$ in each Hom-group with $A/P^nA$. Now we are reduced to looking at modules of finite length, and the sequence is forced to be exact because the lengths of the left and right terms add up to the length in the middle. This is due, I think, to Miyata.)

Answer 15

In descriptive set theory, we study properties of Polish spaces, typically not considered as topological spaces but rather we equip them with their "Borel structure", i.e., the collection of their Borel sets. Any two uncountable standard Borel Polish spaces are isomorphic, and the isomorphism map can be taken to be Borel. In practice, this means that for most properties we study it is irrelevant what specific Polish space we use as underlying "ambient space", it may be ${\mathbb R}$, or ${\mathbb N}^{\mathbb N}$, or ${\mathcal l}^2$, etc, and we tend to think of all of them as "the reals".

In Lebesgue "Sur les fonctions representables analytiquement", J. de math. pures et appl. (1905), Lebesgue makes the mistake of thinking that projections of Borel subsets of the plane ${\mathbb R}^2$ are Borel. In a sense, this mistake created descriptive set theory.

Now we know, for example, that in ${\mathbb N}^{\mathbb N}$, projections of closed sets need not be Borel. Since we usually call reals the members of ${\mathbb N}^{\mathbb N}$,

it is not uncommon to think that projections of closed subsets of ${\mathbb R}^2$ are not necessarily Borel.

(This is false. Note that closed sets are countable union of compact sets. The actual result in ${\mathbb R}$ is that projections of complements of projections of closed subsets of ${\mathbb R}^3$ are not Borel.)

Answer 16

There is a bijection between the set of [true: prime!] ideals of $S^{-1}R$ and the set of [true: prime!] ideals of $R$ which do not intersect $S$.

Answer 17

• Many students have the false belief that if a topological space is totally disconnected, then it must be discrete (related to examples already given). The rationals are a simple counter-example of course.

• It is common to imagine rotation in an n-dimensional space, as a rotation through an "axis". this is of course true only in 3D, In higher dimensions there is no "axis".

• In calculus, I had some troubles with the following wrong idea. A curve in a plane parametrized by a smooth function is "smooth" in the intuitive sense (having no corners). the curve that is defined by $(t^2,t^2)$ for $t\ge0$ and $(-t^2,t^2)$ for $t<0$ is the graph of the absolute value function with a "corner" at the origin, though the coordinate functions are smooth. the "non-regularity" of the parametrization resolves the conflict.

• When first encountering the concept of a spectrum of a ring, the belief that a continuous function between the spectra of two rings must come from a ring homomorphism between the rings.

Answer 18

"Suppose that two features $[x,y]$ from a population $P$ are positively correlated, and we divide $P$ into two subclasses $P_1$, $P_2$. Then, it cannot happen that the respective features ( $[x_1,y1]$ and $[x_2,y_2]$) are negatively correlated in both subclasses

Or more succintly:

"Mixing preserves the correlation sign."

This seems very plausible - almost obvious. But it's false - see Simpon's paradox

Answer 19

False belief: Every commuting pair of diagonalizable elements of $PSL(2,\mathbb{C})$ are simultaneously diagonalizable. The truth: I suppose not many people have thought about it, but it surprised me. Look at $$\left(\matrix{i& 0 \cr 0 & -i\cr } \right), \left(\matrix{0& i \cr i & 0\cr } \right).$$

Answer 20

In measure-theoretic probability, I think there is sometimes an idea among beginners that independent random variables $X,Y$ should be thought of as having "disjoint support" as measurable functions on the underlying probability space $\Omega$. Of course this is the opposite of the truth.

I think this may come from thinking of measure theory as generalizing freshman calculus, so that one's favorite measure space is something like $[0,1]$ with Lebesgue measure. This is technically a probability space, but a really inconvenient one for actually doing probability (where you want to have lots of random variables with some amount of independence).

Answer 21

In geometric combinatorics, there is a widespread belief that polytopes of equal volume are not scissor congruent (as in Hilbert's third problem) only because their dihedral angles are incomparable. The standard example is a cube and a regular tetrahedron, where dihedral angles are in $\Bbb Q\cdot \pi$ for the cube, and $\notin \Bbb Q\cdot \pi\ $ for the regular tetrahedron. In fact, things are rather more complicated, and having similar dihedral angles doesn't always help. For example, the regular tetrahedron is never scissor congruent to a union of several smaller regular tetrahedra (even though the dihedral angles are obviously identical). This is a very special case of a general result due to Sydler (1944).

Answer 22

Piggybacking on one of Pierre's answers, I once had to teach beginning linear algebra from a textbook wherein the authors at one point stated words to the effect that the the trivial vector space {0} has no basis, or that the notion of basis for the trivial vector space makes no sense. It is bad enough as a student to generate one's own false beliefs without having textbooks presenting falsehoods as facts.

My personal belief is that the authors of this text actually know better, but they don't believe that their students can handle the truth, or perhaps that it is too much work or too time-consuming on the part of the instructor to explain such points. Whatever their motivation was, I cannot countenance such rationalizations. I told the students that the textbook was just plain wrong.

Answer 23

A projection of a measurable set is measurable. Not only students believe this. I was asked once (the quote is not precise): "Why do you need this assumption of a measurability of projection? It follows from ..."

A polynomial which takes integer values in all integer points has integer coefficients.

Another one seems to be more specific, I just recalled it reading this example. A sub-$\sigma$-algebra of a countably generated $\sigma$-algebra is countably generated.

Answer 24

Regard a reasonably nice surface in $\mathbb R^3$ that can locally be expressed by each of the functions $x(y,z)$, $y(x,z)$ and $z(x,z)$, then obviously

$\frac {dy} {dx} \cdot \frac {dz} {dy} \cdot \frac {dx} {dz} = 1$

(provided everything exists and is evaluated at the same point).

After all, this kind of reasoning works in $\mathbb R^2$ when calculating the derivative of the inverse function, it works for the chain rule and it works for separation of variables.

---

Note that this product is in fact $-1$ which can either be seen by just thinking about what happens to the equation $ax+by+cz=d$ of a plane / tangent plane or by looking at the expression coming out of the implicit function theorem.

I recall someone claiming that this example proves that $dx$ should be regarded as linear function rather than infinitesimal, but I cannot reconstruct the argument at the moment as this discussion was 15 years ago.

In particular, it is true under appropriate conditions in $\mathbb R^4$ that $\frac {\partial y} {\partial x} \cdot \frac {\partial z} {\partial y} \cdot \frac {\partial w} {\partial z} \cdot \frac {\partial x} {\partial w} = 1$

Answer 25

Just today I came across a mathematician who was under the impression that $\aleph_1$ is defined to be $2^{\aleph_0}$, and therefore that the continuum hypothesis says there is no cardinal between $\aleph_0$ and $\aleph_1$.

In fact, Cantor proved there are no cardinals between $\aleph_0$ and $\aleph_1$. The continuum hypothesis says there are no cardinals between $\aleph_0$ and $2^{\aleph_0}$.

$2^{\aleph_0}$ is the cardinality of the set of all functions from a set of size $\aleph_0$ into a set of size $2$. Equivalently, it is the cardinality of the set of all subsets of a set of size $\aleph_0$, and that is also the cardinality of the set of all real numbers.

$\aleph_1$, on the other hand, is the cardinality of the set of all countable ordinals. (And $\aleph_2$ is the cardinality of the set of all ordinals of cardinality $\le \aleph_1$, and so on, and $\aleph_\omega$ is the next cardinal of well-ordered sets after all $\aleph_n$ for $n$ a finite ordinal, and $\aleph_{\omega+1}$ is the cardinality of the set of all ordinals of cardinality $\le \aleph_\omega$, etc. These definitions go back to Cantor.

Answer 26

To my knowledge, noone has proven that the scheme of pairs of matrices (A,B) satisfying the equations AB=BA is reduced. But whenever I mention this to people someone says "Surely that's known to be reduced!"

(Similar-sounding problem: consider matrices M with $M^2=0$. They must be nilpotent, hence have all eigenvalues zero, hence $Tr(M)=0$. But that linear equation can't be derived from the original homogeneous quadratic equations. Hence this scheme is not reduced.)

Answer 27

A stunning, ignorance-based false belief I have witnessed while observing a class of a math education colleague is that there is no general formula for the n-th Fibonacci number. I wonder if this false belief comes from conflating the (difficult) lack of formulas for prime numbers with something that is just over the horizon of someone whose interests never stretch beyond high-school math.

Behind a number of the elementary false beliefs listed here there is a widespread tendency among people to give up too easily (maybe when having to read at least to page 2 in a book), or to nourish an ego that allows to conclude that something is impossible if they cannot do it themselves.

Answer 28

The distinction between convergence and uniform convergence. It even got Cauchy in its time.

Answer 29

I'm pretty sure I've heard both of the following multiple times:

1. Transfinite induction requires the axiom of choice. False, though many applications of transfinite induction require axiom of choice (either in the form of the well-ordering theorem, or directly (though using transfinite induction together with choice directly is essentially the same as just using Zorn's Lemma)).

2. Transfinite induction requires the axiom of foundation. I guess some people get transfinite induction mixed up with epsilon-induction?

Answer 30

A subgroup of a finitely generated group is again finitely generated.