# All Questions

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### Do all combinatorially distinct fundamental polygons correspond to surfaces?

The topology of a closed surface can be constructed by identifying edges of a fundamental polygon of an even number $2n$ of edges. Labeling the edges and using $\pm 1$ exponents to indicate direction, ...
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### K-theory of the h-cobordism category

I was reading through Kervaire and Milnor's "Groups of Homotopy Spheres", in which the authors begin to compute the groups $\Theta_n$ of h-cobordism classes of homotopy $n$-spheres (with group ...
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### Why do we care about L^p spaces besides p = 1, p = 2, and p = infinity?

I was helping a student study for a functional analysis exam and the question came up as to when, in practice, one needs to consider the Banach space $L^p$ for some value of $p$ other than the obvious ...
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### From the perspective of bordism categories, where does the ring structure on Thom spectra come from?

To fix ideas, let's consider the Thom spectrum of framed bordism $M$, the spectrum whose homotopy groups are the framed bordism groups. $M$ has a ring spectrum structure inducing the product of ...
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### Where are the second- (and third-)generation proofs of the classification of finite simple groups up to?

According the the Wikipedia page, the second generation proof is up to at least nine volumes: six by Gorenstein, Lyons and Solomon dated 1994-2005, two covering the quasithin business by Aschbacher ...
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### Possibility of an Elementary Differential Geometry Course

I have to admit I'm not sure if this is an appropriate question. It's related to research in math education, but not directly to math. I've found that in talking to professional physicists and ...
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### Value of “of course” in the mathematical literature

I've been thinking about the value of writing "of course" in mathematical papers (or its variants such as "obviously" etc.). In particular, my current train of thought is, if something is obvious, ...
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### Isomorphisms between spaces of test functions and sequence spaces

I am in the process of writing some self-contained notes on probability theory in spaces of distributions, for the purposes of statistical mechanics and quantum field theory. Perhaps the simplest ...
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One knows that graded ideals in polynomial rings over a field are primary iff they are graded-primary. What about the irreducible ideals? Let $I$ be a graded ideal in a polynomial ring over a ...
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### Applications of Frobenius theorem and conjecture

A theorem of Frobenius states that if $n$ divides the order of a finite group $G$, then the number of solutions to $x^n = 1$ in $G$ is a multiple of $n$. Frobenius conjectured that if the number of ...
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### Why does the (S2) property of a ring correspond to the Hartogs phenomenon?

Hartogs Theorem says every function whose undefined locus is of codim 2 can be extend to the whole domain. I saw people saying this corresponds to the (S2) property of a ring. But I can't see why this ...
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### Is there a slick proof of the classification of finitely generated abelian groups?

One the proofs that I've never felt very happy with is the classification of finitely generated abelian groups (which says an abelian group is basically uniquely the sum of cyclic groups of orders ...
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### Is there a preferable convention for defining the wedge product?

There are different conventions for defininig the wedge product $\wedge$. In Kobayashi-Nomizu, there is $\alpha\wedge\beta:=Alt(\alpha\otimes\beta)$, in Spivak, we find ...
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### A question on generalized Einstein metrics on four-dimensional manifolds

I am thinking of a possible generalization of Einstein metrics (or a possible characterization of Einstein metrics) on four-dimensional manifolds, \begin{equation*} ...
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I am always fascinated when a quadratic form (or a quadric) arises naturally. I have some elementary examples, but most of all, I want to learn more examples. I hope this question isn't considered too ...
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### Alternating sum of square roots of binomial coefficients

Let $$c_n = \sum_{r=0}^n (-1)^r \sqrt{\binom{n}{r}}.$$ It is clear that $c_n = 0$ if $n$ is odd. Remarkably, it appears that despite the huge positive and negative contributions in the sum ...
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### Fairest way to choose gifts

Suppose that a parent brings home from a trip $2n$ gifts of roughly equal value for his/her two children. The children get to choose one at a time which gifts they want. What is the fairest way to do ...
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### Standard model of ZFC

Is ZFC+Con(ZFC) powerful enough to show there isn't any standard model of ZFC? What you think about it?
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### Existence of solution to quasilinear parabolic PDEs

Hello. I want to prove the existence of a weak solution to: Find $u:S^1 \times [0,T) \to \mathbb{R}$ such that $$\frac{\partial u}{\partial t} = u^{n_1}\frac{\partial^2 u}{\partial x^2} + u^{n_2}$$ ...
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### Easier reference for material like Diaconis's “Group representations in probability and statistics”

I'm teaching a class on the representation theory of finite groups at the advanced undergrad level. One of the things I'd like to talk about, or possibly have a student do any independent project on ...
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### Normal subgroups of finite index in free groups

Hi all, This is a question about the groups $H_{n,s}$ introduced by Völklein in his book "Groups as Galois groups", §7.1, and defined as follows: let $N$ be the intersection of all normal subgroups ...
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### Graphs with fractal properties?

For the purposes of a research project, I am wondering if there are any resources on graphs with fractal properties, by which I mean self-similarity in particular. For instance, imagine a graph where ...
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### Elements of infinite order in a profinite group

Say G is a profinite group with elements of arbitrarily large order. Do elements of infinite order exist (A) if we assume G is abelian? (B) in general? A start for (A): we can ask the same question ...
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### Nash embedding theorem for 2D manifolds

The Nash embedding theorem tells us that every smooth Riemannian m-manifold can be embedded in $R^n$ for, say, $n = m^2 + 5m + 3$. What can we say in the special case of 2-manifolds? For example, can ...
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### What is Chern-Simons theory?

What is Chern-Simons theory? I have read the wikipedia entry, but it's pretty physics-y and I wasn't really able to get any sense for what Chern-Simons theory really is in terms of mathematics. ...
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### Are Thom spectra MU, MSO and K-theory spectra KU, KO modules over some truncations of the sphere spectrum?

The Thom spectrum MO is a module over the ring spectrum π≤0S=HZ, where S is the sphere spectrum. In particular, MO is equivalent to the Eilenberg-MacLane spectrum Hπ*(MO). On the other hand, MU and ...
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### Teichmuller theory and moduli of Riemann surfaces

This is a sequel to my earlier question asking for references for Teichmuller theory and moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces. In this connection, I have read Chapter 11 of the book Primer of mapping ...
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### From Lebesgue Integral to Stieltjes Integral, and integration by parts

Let $X$ be a real random variable with c.d.f function $F$. Let $g$ be an increasing measurable real function and assume that $\mathbb{E}\left[g(X)\right]$ exists (and is finite). What additional ...
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### contact metric structure on squashed spheres

My goal to write down an explicit (and simplest) contact metric structure on squashed $S_\omega^{2n + 1}$ defined as S_\omega ^{2n + 1} = \left\{ {\left( {{z_i}} \right) \in ...
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### Intuitive explanation of Burnside's Lemma

Burnside's Lemma states that, given a set $X$ acted on by a group $G$, $$|X/G|=\frac{1}{|G|}\sum_{g\in G}|X^g|$$ where $|X/G|$ is the number of orbits of the action, and $|X^g|$ is the number of ...
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### Simple/efficient representation of Stirling numbers of the first kind

Stirling numbers of the second kind can be expressed by means of a simple hypergeometric (considering $n$ fixed) sum $$S_2(n,k) = \frac{1}{k!}\sum_{j=0}^{k}(-1)^{k-j}{k \choose j} j^n. \qquad (1)$$ ...
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### Should science authors discourage / boycott the recent push for author IDs [closed]

In recent years, several organizations (publishers, arXiv, universities) started pushing for systems of a reliable author identification, gaining considerable traction with the recent launch of ORCID. ...
I'm currently trying to relate two descriptions of the curvature and torsion of a connection and am running into some confusion. I know that an affine connection $A$ on an $n$-dimensional manifold ...
What is an early reference for the fact that if a compact, connected $n$-manifold $M$ is covered by two open sets homeomorphic to $\mathbb{R}^n$ then $M$ is homeomorphic to $S^n$? And is it true that ...