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170 votes
47 answers
34k views

Every mathematician has only a few tricks

In Gian-Carlo Rota's "Ten lessons I wish I had been taught" he has a section, "Every mathematician has only a few tricks", where he asserts that even mathematicians like Hilbert ...
85 votes
19 answers
15k views

Each mathematician has only a few tricks

The question "Every mathematician has only a few tricks" originally had approximately the title of my question here, but originally admitted an interpretation asking for a small collection ...
50 votes
37 answers
6k views

Structures that turn out to exhibit a symmetry even though their definition doesn't

Sometimes (often?) a structure depending on several parameters turns out to be symmetric w.r.t. interchanging two of the parameters, even though the definition gives a priori no clue of that symmetry. ...