Examples of common false beliefs in mathematics

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 $\mathbb{C}$;
(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 $\mathbb{R}$ must be the whole of $\mathbb{R}$. 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

It's easy when you're an amateur to topology to assume any continuous bijection has a continuous inverse. The inverse of an arbitrary continuous bijection in a topological space is open, but it's NOT necessarily continuous. Continuity turns out to be a stronger condition.

Answer 2

People are silly. Did you ever notice how at airports, say, people happily walk around but when they come to a moving walkway, they tend to stop and take a break? Walking on a moving walkway is not any harder than walking on an ordinary walkway, and resting for 10 seconds here or there will get you to your destination 10 seconds later. So why do people stop for a rest in one place but hardly ever in the other?

The embarrassing bit is that I believed this logic myself for some time, and thought that people were indeed silly, until my son corrected me. I'm not sure if this falls under "a common false belief in mathematics", but it's certainly an amusing and confusing mistake to make.

Answer 3

"The image of a category under a functor is a category."

This is a small one, but it lasted for six months when I was starting in category theory.

A finite counterexample exists, with just 3 objects. Even under a connectivity requirement, a small finite counterexample still exists. In fact, it is dead wrong to think anything like this holds.

Answer 4

Some people believe there is no "formula" for the nth prime number. Of course there are many such formulas, even though not very useful: https://mathworld.wolfram.com/PrimeFormulas.html

The reason given for disbelieving the existence of a "prime number formula" is also curious: "because the primes are unpredictable". This belief is in contradiction with the simple fact that anyone can come up with an easy algorithm which gives the nth prime number. There is something mystical associated with this ill-defined term "formula".

Answer 5

That the notion of "picking a random number" is well-defined without providing any further information.

Answer 6

It is a difficult open problem whether every finite group is isomorphic to the group of automorphisms of a finite extension $K$ of $\mathbb{Q}$. In fact, this result is true! See for instance M. Fried: A Note on Automorphism Groups of Algebraic Number Fields; https://www.jstor.org/stable/2043724, https://doi.org/10.2307/2043724. The actual "inverse Galois problem" also requires $K$ to be a Galois extension of $\mathbb{Q}$. The true theorem is equivalent to the statement that every finite group is isomorphic to a quotient group of a Galois group over $\mathbb{Q}$. I once observed a famous expert on algebraic number theory being confused on this issue.

Answer 7

False belief: "There are no known sub-exponential time algorithms for NP-complete problems."

This one is tricky for a couple of reasons. The first is that the term "sub-exponential" is sometimes defined in different ways. With a sufficiently strong definition of "sub-exponential" the above statement is true, in the sense that there is no known separation of the complexity classes NP and EXPTIME (EXPTIME being the class of languages decidable in time $2^{p(n)}$ where $p(n)$ is a polynomial). However, it is quite common to refer to an $O(2^{\sqrt{n}})$ algorithm as "sub-exponential." It is trivial to construct an NP-complete problem that can be solved in sub-exponential time in this sense, because the standard definition of a reduction allows you to expand the size of the input from $n$ to $n^2$ say (e.g., by padding with zeros). But less artificial examples also exist, such as the planar traveling salesman problem, which was shown by Smith to be solvable in $2^{O(\sqrt{n})}$ time without any artificial padding. What is true is that there are many NP-complete problems, such as 3SAT, for which no subexponential algorithms are known if you do not artificially pad the representation of the instances. (Reducing 3SAT to planar TSP does not work because the instance size blows up during the reduction.)

Often this false belief shows up in the following form: "Factoring cannot be NP-complete because there are subexponential algorithms for factoring." It is true that factoring is not known to be NP-complete but the reasoning is wrong. Showing that factoring is NP-complete would not automatically yield subexponential algorithms for all other NP-complete problems.

Answer 8

Linear algebra: 1. If V is a vector space spanned by {e_i} and W is a subspace of V then W is spanned by e_k's contained in it. Actually, this is widely believed with bases in place of spanning sets. Or

2.   (U+V)∩W = U∩W + V∩W.

Both these "properties" are closely related to the current leader (by Tilman).

3. Every element of V⊗W is v⊗w with v∈ V, w∈ W.

All three are probably due to interpolating our intuition about sets to vector spaces.

4. Every symmetric matrix is diagonalizable.

Wait, didn't we prove this? ("True for the real matrices, so must be true in general").

Algebraic groups: if G is a linear algebraic group acting on a vector space V then the (Krull) dimension of the invariant ring satisfies the inequality

    dim k[V]^G ≥ dim V-dim G,

or even a more precise belief that dim k[V]^G=dim V-dim G_x for a generic x. This is true in the differentiable situation for the dimension of the quotient, when a compact Lie group acts smoothly on a manifold, and algebraic actions are "nicer", right?

Answer 9

Real projective space ${\mathbb{RP}}^3 = (\mathbb R^4 - 0)/\mathbb R^*$ is non-orientable.

Answer 10

$\pi$ is equal to 22/7.

This was touched upon in the comments to a totally unrelated answer but I think this false belief is important enough to warrant its own answer (and as far as I could tell it does not have one yet, my apologies if I overlooked one.)

Of course, it's unlikely anyone on this site believes this, or ever believed it, which is why I think it's important to insist on this: it does not really resonate with us, we are unlikely to warn students against it, yet we probably see in front of us many students who have that false belief and then will move on to spread it around.

A Piece of Evidence

Let me offer as evidence this gem taken off the comments section of an unrelated (but quite thought-provoking) article on Psychology Today, of all places! When Less is More: The Case for Teaching Less Math in Schools (The title is a misnomer, it's a case for starting math later, but I think that with such a scheme you should be able to teach more math overall; anyway, read it for yourselves.)

Some years ago, my (now ex-) wife was involved in a "trivia night" fundraiser at her elementary school, and they wanted me on their "teacher team" to round out their knowledge. They had almost everything covered except some technology-related topics and I was an IT guy. In round four, my moment to shine arrived, as the category was "Math & Science" and one of the questions was, "give the first five digits of pi." I quickly said, "3.1415." The 9 teachers at the table ignored me and wrote down "22/7" on scrap paper and began to divide it out. I observed this quietly at first, assuming that 22/7ths gave the right answer for the first 5 digits, but it doesn't. It gives something like 3.1427. I said, "Whoops, that won't work." They ignored me and consulted among themselves, concluding that they had all done the division properly on 22/7ths out to five digits. I said, "That's not right, it's 3.1415." [...]

I'm cutting it off here because it's a long story: hilarity ensues when the non-teacher at the table stands up for the truth (when he finds out that the decimals of 22/7 were the expected answer!) The final decision of the judges:

"We've got a correction on the 'pi' question, apparently there's been confusion, but we will now be accepting 3.1415 as a correct answer as well" [as 3.1427].

The Moral of the Story

I used to dismiss out of hand this kind of confusion: who could be dumb enough to believe that $\pi$ is 22/7? (Many people apparently: in the portion of the story I cut was another gem - "I'm sorry, but I'm a civil engineer, and math is my job. Pi is 22/7ths.")

Now, I treat this very seriously, and depending on where you live, you should too. Damage wrought during the influential early years is very hard to undo, so that the contradictory facts "$\pi$ is irrational" and "$\pi$=22/7" can coexist in an undergraduate's mind. And when that person leaves school, guess which of the two beliefs will get discarded: the one implanted since childhood, or the one involving a notion (rational numbers) which is already getting fuzzy in the person's brain? I'm afraid it's no contest there, unless this confusion has been specifically addressed.

So if you have any future teachers in your classes (and even if you don't, cf. the civil engineer above), consider addressing this false belief at some point.

Answer 11

False belief: Saying that ZFC is consistent is the same as saying that if ZFC proves "there are infinitely many twin primes" (for example) then there really are infinitely many twin primes.

Everybody realizes that if ZFC is inconsistent then a formal ZFC proof of "there are infinitely many twin primes" tells us nothing about whether there really are infinitely many twin primes. A lot of people, without necessarily realizing it, turn this around and assume that the consistency of ZFC is the only condition needed to ensure that its theorems are "trustworthy." But this is not the case, even if we restrict our attention to first-order statements about the natural numbers. We say that ZFC is arithmetically sound if all first-order sentences about the natural numbers that are provable in ZFC are true. The arithmetical soundness of ZFC is a stronger condition than the consistency of ZFC. For example, Goedel's 2nd incompleteness theorem says that if ZFC is consistent, then ZFC doesn't prove "ZFC is consistent." So it's conceivable that ZFC is consistent but that "ZFC is inconsistent" is a theorem of ZFC. Then we would have an example of a theorem of ZFC that asserts something false, even though ZFC is consistent.

Answer 12

The commutator [H,K] of two subgroups H,K is the set of commutators [h,k] with h in H and k in K. (Instead, it is the group generated by those commutators. Confusingly, the convention with products HK usually goes the other way.)

In a similar vein: a 2-vector $\omega \in \bigwedge^2 V$ is always the wedge product of two 1-vectors. (Instead, this is merely an important special case of a 2-vector.) Part of the difficulty here is that the statement is true in the important three-dimensional case. Once one is aware of the Plucker embedding, this confusion goes away, but that can take a while...

Answer 13

"A continuous image of a locally compact space is locally compact."

This is tempting because it is true without the "locally"s and it is often the case that topological properties and statements can be "localized". This came up in a problem session for my [number theory!] course this semester, and although the students were too experienced to accept it without proof, they had no alarm bells in their heads to prevent them from entertaining the possibility.

The way to quash this (as well as Andrew L.'s answer, which reminded me of this) is to realize that if it were true, every space $X$ would be locally compact, since the identity map from $X$ endowed with the discrete topology to $X$ is a continuous bijection.

Answer 14

If $f$ is (Lebesgue) integrable on $\mathbb{R}$, then $f(x) \to 0$, as $x \to \infty$. False: there exists a continuous integrable function on $\mathbb{R}$ such that $\limsup_{\infty} f = \infty$ (an exercise in Stein and Shakarchi's Real Analysis).

Answer 15

Here's one that doesn't seem to be listed here: That ZFC isn't vulnerable to Russell's paradox because it has an axiom which implies that sets cannot be elements of themselves.

This one should be obviously false given even a moment's thought -- you cannot get rid of a paradox by adding axioms! But I've seen it repeated over and over.

The correct statement, of course, is that ZFC isn't vulnerable to Russell's paradox because it doesn't have the axiom of unrestricted comprehension; and that while ZFC does have an axiom which implies that all sets are well-founded, this is irrelevant to Russell's paradox. (It just means that the set of all sets which are not elements of themselves, if it existed, would happen to also be the set of all sets.)

Sometimes this is stated in an ambiguous way that allows for the charitable reading that modern set theory prevents Russell's paradox by preventing one from talking about a set being an element of itself, which is how Russell and Whitehead fixed the problem. But Principia Mathematica isn't exactly "modern set theory"; and I've seen this stated the blatantly wrong way often enough that I'm not too inclined to be charitable about it.

Answer 16

I just finished quadratic congruences in my number theory class. I am not any more surprised to see how strong is students' belief in the fact that $x^2\equiv a\pmod{m}$ has at most 2 solutions. Even after you discuss an example $x^2\equiv1\pmod{143}$ (with solutions $x\equiv\pm1,\pm12\pmod{143}$) in details.

And, of course, a lot of wrong beliefs in real analysis. Like an infinitely differentiable function, say in a neighbourhood of origin, must be analytic at the origin.

Answer 17

False belief:

• The category of commutative C*-algebras is opposite equivalent to the category of locally compact Hausdorff spaces.

It's actually not quite that simple! There is some discussion on math.SE.

Answer 18

I do not think anybody mentioned this example:

If $M$ is a $C^k$-smooth manifold then the tangent space $T_pM$ is isomorphic to the space of derivations of germs (at $p$) of $C^k$-smooth functions on $M$.

This holds for $k=\infty$, $k=\omega$ (i.e. in the real-analytic category), but not otherwise.

For details and positive results (characterizing derivations which come from tangent vectors even when $k<\infty$) see

Newns, W. F.; Walker, A. G., Tangent planes to a differentiable manifold, J. Lond. Math. Soc. 31, 400-406 (1956). ZBL0071.15303.

Abraham, R.; Marsden, J. E.; Ratiu, T., Manifolds, tensor analysis, and applications., Applied Mathematical Sciences. 75. New York: Springer-Verlag. x, 654 p. (1988). ZBL0875.58002.

Answer 19

A false belief which I meet not infrequently this time of year while marking exams is the following:

The exponential map is surjective for a connected Lie group.

This is true for compact Lie groups, but certainly false in general. A (finite-dimensional) connected Lie group is generated by the image of the exponential map, but already $SL(2,\mathbb{R})$ shows that there are elements which are not in the image of the exponential map.

Interestingly, for a connected real Lie group, every element can be written as the product of at most two exponentials.

Answer 20

$0^0$ is undefined.

EDIT: People write things like $\sum_{k=0}^\infty x^k$ all day, but somehow $x=k=0$ is still scary when written as $0^0$.

Answer 21

Let $A,B$ be Hermitian matrices. If $0_n\le A\le B$, then $A^2\le B^2$.

False, but subtle! Loewner's theory characterizes those numerical functions $f:[0,\infty)\rightarrow {\mathbb R}$ such that $0_n\le A\le B$ implies $f(A)\le f(B)$ (operator monotone functions). These are the traces over $[0,\infty)$ of holomorphic functions mapping the Poincaré half-plane ${\mathcal H}$ into itself, and of course real on $[0,\infty)$. Thus the square root is operator monotone: $$(0_n\le A\le B)\Longrightarrow(\sqrt A\le\sqrt B),$$ but the square map is not. Counter-example: $$A=\begin{pmatrix} 1 & 0 \\\\ 0 & 0 \end{pmatrix},\qquad B=\begin{pmatrix} 2 & 1 \\\\ 1 & 1 \end{pmatrix}$$

Answer 22

This is a bit specialized, but a common misconception in low-dimensional topology (particularly in knot theory) is that any change of basis in homology is realized by a diffeomorphism, hence (for a surface) by an action of a mapping class. I think this is exactly the type of false belief being described (I falsely believed it for a long time myself).

Common misconception: Let F be a genus 2g surface, and let $b_1,\ldots,b_{2g}$ be a primitive basis for $H_1(F)$, represented as embedded curves in F. Any change of basis for $H_1(F)$ is realized by an action of the mapping class group of F on the embedded curves.

This is rubbish- the action of the mapping class group on homology is by $Sp_{2g}(\mathbb{Z}))$, which for $g>1$ is a proper subgroup of $GL_{2g}(\mathbb{Z})$, the group of base-changes of $H_1(F)$.
As an example of what you can't do with a diffeomorphism of a surface, consider a disc with 4 bands A,B,C,D attached, so the order of the end sements is $A^+B^-A^-B^+C^+D^-C^-D^+$, together forming a surface. A basis a,b,c,d for $H_1(F)$ is given by this picture as 4 loops going through the cores of the bands A,B,C,D correspondingly. You can add a to b, b to c, c to d, or d to a by diffeomorphism of F (sliding adjacent bands over one another). However, although you can add a to c algebraically, because bands A and C are "not adjacent in F", there is no corresponding diffeomorphism of $F$.
One place this mistake manifests itself (cranking up the level of terminology for a second) is in thinking that unimodular congruence of a Seifert matrix corresponds to ambient isotopy of a Seifert surface.
A related common mistake (closely related to this question):

Common misconception: Any homology class is represented as a submanifold. Maybe even as an embedded submanifold.

Answer 23

The quotient $G/Z(G)$ of a group by its center is centerless. I definitely thought this until it was pointed out to me in a Lie theory textbook that this wasn't true in general, but is true for (edit: connected) Lie groups with discrete center. (It is also true if $G$ is perfect by Grun's lemma.)

Answer 24

In group theory, if $G_1 \cong G_2$ and $H_1 \cong H_2$, then

$G_1 / H_1 \cong G_2 / H_2$.

For example, $\mathbb{Z} / 2\mathbb{Z} \not \cong \mathbb{Z} / \mathbb{Z}$. The point is that the inclusion of $H_j$ into $G_j$ is needed in order to define the quotient.

Answer 25

All higher homotopy groups of spheres are zero.

Proof: The higher homology groups of spheres are zero, and the higher homotopy groups are abelian, and since homology groups are abelianizations of homotopy groups the higher homotopy groups are also zero.

This misconception is also made more difficult by the fact that even the simple counterexamples can't be drawn easily.

Answer 26

Suppose that two features $[x,y]$ from a population $P$ are positively correlated. We divide $P$ into two subclasses $P_1$, $P_2$. Then, it cannot happen that the respective features ( $[x_1,y_1]$ and $[x_2,y_2]$) are negatively correlated in both subclasses

Or more succinctly:

Mixing preserves the correlation sign.

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

Answer 27

After learning that the Witt vectors of a finite field of size $p^n$ is the ring of integers of the unramified extension of ${\mathbf Q}_p$ of degree $n$, I think lots of people then think that the Witt vectors of $\overline{\mathbf F}_p$ (the algebraic closure of ${\mathbf F}_p$) is the ring of integers of the maximal unramified extension of ${\mathbf Q}_p$. It isn't: the integers of the maximal unramified extension is the union of the Witt vectors of the finite fields of $p$-power size whereas the Witt vectors of $\overline{\mathbf F}_p$ is the $p$-adic completion of the integers of the maximal unramified extension; the distinction turns on being able to write Witt vectors over $\overline{\mathbf F}_p$ as series with coefficients that are prime-to-$p$ roots of unity of increasingly large degree instead of having bounded degree.

I was at a conference last fall where a famous mathematician was confused by this point, although to be fair he really never worked seriously with Witt vectors before.

Answer 28

a function $f:\mathbb{R}\rightarrow \mathbb{R}$ is $n$ times differentiable if and only if for each real $x_0$ it may be approximated near $x_0$ by a polynomial of degree at most $n$ with remainder $o((x-x_0)^n)$

Answer 29

If a topological space has an open cover by Hausdorff spaces, it is Hausdorff.

Answer 30

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 $H$.