All Questions

99,581 questions
6k views

Category theory sans (much) motivation?

So I have a friend (no, really) who's taking algebra and is struggling to gain intuition for it. My story is as follows: I used to hate abstract algebra, with pretty much a burning passion, until I ...
335 views

Weil-Châtelet group

Sorry if this is obvious. I'd like to understand why the map WC(E/Q) -> H^1(Gal(Q/Q), E(Q)) is bijective. Thanks.
1k views

Does Cantor-Bernstein hold for classes?

In Bonn, we've been have a discussion on the topic in the title: Suppose that A and B is are classes and that there are injections from A to B and fom B to A. Does it follow that there is a ...
949 views

What are the higher $\mathrm{Ext}^i(A,\mathbf{G}_m)$'s, where $A$ is an abelian scheme?

Let $S$ be a base scheme, let $A/S$ be an abelian scheme, and let $\mathbf{G}_m/S$ be the multiplicative group; consider $A$ and $\mathbf{G}_m$ as objects in the abelian category of sheaves of abelian ...
12k views

What's a groupoid? What's a good example of a groupoid? [closed]

Or more specifically, why do people get so excited about them? And what's your favorite easy example of one, which illustrates why I should care (and is not a group)?
786 views

easy(?) probability/diff eq. question

I've been wondering about this ever since I was a little kid and I used to ride in the back of the car and my mom would speed like hell towards a green light, only to slam on the brakes when she ...
2k views

Smooth classifying spaces?

Take G to be a group. I care about discrete groups, but the answer in general would be welcome too. There are the various ways to construct the classifying space of G, bar construction, cellular ...
284 views

Smooth immersion(?) of graphs into the plane

Sorry if the terminology's wrong, I don't know differential topology. Also, this is more of a brain-teaser than a bona fide research question, but it's hopefully a "real mathematician"-level brain-...
661 views

Commutativity in K-theory and cohomology

The Chern classes give a map $f : BU \to \prod_n K(\mathbb{Z},2n)$, which is a rational equivalence. However, it is not an equivalence over $\mathbb{Z}$ because the cohomology of $BU$ is just a ...
124k views

Do good math jokes exist? [closed]

Have a good joke? Share. I know this is subjective, but the principle "should be of interest to mathematicians" trumps. (I hope.)
2k views

What is an example of a topological space that is not homotopy equivalent to a CW-complex?

It would also be nice if someone can explain this comment appearing on the Wikipedia page on CW-complexes: "The homotopy category of CW complexes is, in the opinion of some experts, the best if not ...
2k views

How to compute the (co)homology of orbit spaces (when the action is not free)?

Suppose a compact Lie group G acts on a compact manifold Q in a not necessarily free manner. Is there any general method to gain information about the quotient Q/G (a stratified space)? For example, I ...
920 views

Boolean network as a gauge field

Consider a set of N binary-state nodes at "time" t, each of which is a (boolean) transition function of two nodes in the set, evaluated at time t-1. Thus there are N of these boolean functions of two ...
996 views

Motivation for coherence axioms

The pentagon and hexagon axioms in the definition of a symmetric monoidal category are one example that I was thinking of here; the axioms of a weak 2-category are another. I understand that it can ...
7k views

Order of an automorphism of a finite group

Let G be a finite group of order n. Must every automorphism of G have order less than n? (David Speyer: I got this question from you long ago, but I don't know whether you knew the answer. I stil ...
3k views

Definition of infinite permutations

I've been trying to find a definition of an infinite permutation on-line without much success. Does there exist a canonical definition or are there various ways one might go about defining this? The ...
261 views

Change of basis with Multilinear fucntion [closed]

Take a multi-linear function(or functional) M that takes m arguments V1…Vm, each with a dimension n. Consider only the case where m=n. Let there be a change of basis performed on the arguments(V1...Vm)...
6k views

When does Cantor-Bernstein hold?

The Cantor-Bernstein theorem in the category of sets (A injects in B, B injects in A => A, B equivalent) holds in other categories such as vector spaces, compact metric spaces, Noetherian topological ...
764 views

What m minimizes E(|m-X|^3) for a random variable X?

Let X be a random variable. Then E(|m-X|^1) is minimized when (as a function of m) when m is the median of X, and E(|m-X|^2) is minimized when m is the mean of x. A couple weeks ago in a technical ...
1k views

Splitting Pythagorean triples

Can one partition the set of positive integers into finitely many Pythagorean-triple-free subsets? If so, what is the smallest number of such subsets? Taking a wild guess, I would be least surprised ...
16k views

Why is it so cool to square numbers (in terms of finding the standard deviation)?

When we want to find the standard deviation of $\{1,2,2,3,5\}$ we do $$\sigma = \sqrt{ {1 \over 5-1} \left( (1-2.6)^2 + (2-2.6)^2 + (2-2.6)^2 + (3-2.6)^2 + (5 - 2.6)^2 \right) } \approx 1.52$$. Why ...
985 views

What is the size of the category of finite dimensional F_q vector spaces?

The size of a finite skeletal category C in the sense of Leinster is defined as follows: Label the objects of C by integers 1,2,...,n and let aij be the number of morphisms from i to j (for i and j ...
584 views