# All Questions

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### Describe the desired features of a “Mathematics Colloquium”?

I'm now a member of my department's colloquium committee. Our task is to make a great colloquium series. I thought that the first step would be to come up with an appropriate definition of ...
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### Counterexamples in Algebra?

This is certainly related to "What are your favorite instructional counterexamples?", but I thought I would ask a more focused question. We've all seen Counterexamples in Analysis and Counterexamples ...
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### Demonstrating that rigour is important

Any pure mathematician will from time to time discuss, or think about, the question of why we care about proofs, or to put the question in a more precise form, why we seem to be so much happier with ...
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### Rellich's theorem from compact resolvent

On a compact Riemannian manifold, we know that the Laplacian $\Delta$ has compact resolvent. In proving this, one typical way is to use Rellich's theorem about the compact embedding of $H^1(M)$ into ...
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### Link between Harris recurrence and Ergodicity

Is it possible to obtain Harris recurrent Markov chain from Ergodic chain (in Birkhoff sense) under certain assumption? That is, suppose we know a Markov chain is ergodic (in Birkhoff sense); is it ...
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### Elementary+Short+Useful

Imagine your-self in front of a class with very good undergraduates who plan to do mathematics (professionally) in the future. You have 30 minutes after that you do not see these students again. You ...
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### Most harmful heuristic?

What's the most harmful heuristic (towards proper mathematics education), you've seen taught/accidentally taught/were taught? When did handwaving inhibit proper learning?
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### A priori estimates for a nonlinear elliptic problem singular on the boundary

Let us consider the following elliptic problem $$\begin{cases} -\Delta u = \frac{u^p}{|x|^2} \mbox{ in } \Omega \\ u >0 \mbox{ in } \Omega \\ u = 0 \mbox{ on } \partial \Omega. \end{cases}$$ with ...
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### Furtwangler's Principal ideal theorem in number fields

Does anyone know a simple proof, using cohomological method of the fact that the verlagerung from a finite group G. to its commutator subgroup G', i.e. $$G/G'->(G')^{ab}$$ vanishes? The simplest ...
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### Which math paper maximizes the ratio (importance)/(length)?

My vote would be Milnor's 7-page paper "On manifolds homeomorphic to the 7-sphere", in Vol. 64 of Annals of Math. For those who have not read it, he explicitly constructs smooth 7-manifolds which are ...
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### Distribution of Mordell–Weil ranks of higher genus curves

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### Maps which induce the same homomorphism on homotopy and homology groups are homotopic

I am interested in the following question. Are maps which induce the same homomorphism on homotopy and homology groups homotopic? I am sure the answer is no, however I cannot imagine how to construct ...
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