Timeline for Why certain diophantine equations are interesting (and others are not) ?
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
10 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Sep 5, 2013 at 5:56 | history | undeleted | Kim Morrison | ||
| Aug 21, 2012 at 7:22 | history | deleted | user631 | ||
| Oct 20, 2010 at 15:32 | comment | added | Emerton | ... connection to a larger story (and thus differing from modular curves or other Shimura varieties or moduli spaces). I also enjoyed the statement about the "theorem of Wiles", but that's just a reflection of my taste in mathematical humour. | |
| Oct 20, 2010 at 15:30 | comment | added | Emerton | Dear Minhyong and Frictionless Jellyfish, Knowing finiteness of Sha for one elliptic curve of rank > 1 is something that I would certainly find very interesting; it's hard to imagine how this could be verified without the method extending to some larger class of curves (however circumscribed), but in any case, knowing it even in one instance would be fantastic. So perhaps my position is not quite as extreme as curmudgeon's. But I am sympathetic to the idea that Fermat was the last really interesting "individual" Diophantine equation, gaining its interest from itself rather than its ... | |
| Oct 20, 2010 at 9:01 | comment | added | Minhyong Kim | Anyways, assuming the obvious reading, it still seemed a bit too strange for someone to claim that there is a theorem to the effect that something is not interesting. I even wondered if the name 'Wiles' actually referred to someone else, perhaps a logician, who had a theorem that admitted such an interpretation. I guess it was a sophisticated joke of sorts that went over my head. | |
| Oct 20, 2010 at 8:45 | comment | added | Minhyong Kim | Dear FJ: My quote was certainly not meant as a complaint! Because English is not my first language, when I'm about to make an 'obvious' correction, I'm often grabbed by hesitation. On the other hand, maybe it's that I don't understand the usage of [sic], which I'd be happy to be enlightened about. Yes, there was an obvious reading, but the claim in that form seemed unusually extreme to me, so I wanted to be sure. | |
| Oct 20, 2010 at 8:22 | history | edited | KConrad | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
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| Oct 19, 2010 at 3:39 | comment | added | Minhyong Kim | Matt: This might be one of those rare instances where we disagree. In any case, I don't understand the mysterious sentence 'it is a theorem of Wiles that [sic] are no more specific diophantine equations of interest.' | |
| Oct 19, 2010 at 0:08 | comment | added | Emerton | I think this is a fair assessment of the situation. | |
| Oct 18, 2010 at 18:53 | history | answered | user631 | CC BY-SA 2.5 |