12k views

### The concept of Duality

I have been thinking for sometime about asking this question, but because I did not want to have two "big-list" questions open at the same time, I did not ask this one. Now its time has come. ...
7k views

### Examples of “unsuccessful” theories with afterlives

I am looking for examples of mathematical theories which were introduced with a certain goal in mind, and which failed to achieved this goal, but which nevertheless developed on their own and ...
2k views

### Why are we interested in permutahedra, associahedra, cyclohedra, …?

The following families of polytopes have received a lot of attention: permutahedra, associahedra, cyclohedra, ... My question is simple: Why? As I understand, at least the latter two were ...
3k views

### Why is there a connection between enumerative geometry and nonlinear waves?

Recently I encountered in a class the fact that there is a generating function of Gromov--Witten invariants that satisfies the Korteweg--de Vries hierarchy. Let me state the fact more precisely. ...
1k views

### Combinatorics of the Stasheff polytopes

First a little background for those unaware. The Stasheff polytopes (or associahedra) are certain convex polytopes that arise in the theory of $A_\infty$-algebras. There is one polytope for each \$n\...
698 views

### “MultiCatalan numbers”

Could anyone provide a reference for the following (sort of) generalization of Catalan numbers: the multinomial coefficient $$\binom{2k_1+3k_2+4k_3+...}{k_1+2k_2+3k_3+...,k_1,k_2,k_3,...}$$ is ...
2k views

### An Intriguing Tapestry: Number triangles, polytopes, Grassmannians, and scattering amplitudes

What are the roles that the classic number arrays-- Eulerian, Narayana--play in the application of totally non-negative Grassmannians, or amplituhedrons, to string / twistor scattering theory? (This ...
2k views

### Why do polytopes pop up in Lagrange inversion?

I'd be interested in hearing people's viewpoints on this. Looking for an intuitive perspective. See Wikipedia for descriptions of polytopes and the Lagrange inversion theorem/formula (LIF) for ...