Skip to main content
Search type Search syntax
Tags [tag]
Exact "words here"
Author user:1234
user:me (yours)
Score score:3 (3+)
score:0 (none)
Answers answers:3 (3+)
answers:0 (none)
isaccepted:yes
hasaccepted:no
inquestion:1234
Views views:250
Code code:"if (foo != bar)"
Sections title:apples
body:"apples oranges"
URL url:"*.example.com"
Saves in:saves
Status closed:yes
duplicate:no
migrated:no
wiki:no
Types is:question
is:answer
Exclude -[tag]
-apples
For more details on advanced search visit our help page
Results tagged with
Search options answers only not deleted user 1149

Questions designed to generate a "big list" of certain results, examples, conjectures, etc. via many individual answers, each contributing one or a few instances. Such a question should typically be in Community Wiki mode (CW); after asking, please, flag for moderators attention requesting the question to be made CW.

32 votes
Accepted

Proofs of the Chevalley-Warning Theorem

I am working on a book-length manusript, Around the Chevalley–Warning Theorem. A complete answer to your question is estimated at about 150 pages! In terms of what exists at the moment, here are two …
Pete L. Clark's user avatar
32 votes

Examples of theorems with proofs that have dramatically improved over time

I think that Ax's proof of the Chevalley-Warning Theorem qualifies. The Chevalley-Warning Theorem is an affirmative solution of a conjecture made by L.E. Dickson in 1909 and taken up more seriously b …
18 votes

An example of a proof that is explanatory but not beautiful? (or vice versa)

1) "There is no simple group of order $n$" (for various composite values of $n$ in the interval $[50,200] \setminus \{60,168\}$ or so). These arguments are explanatory but not beautiful. They seem v …
7 votes

Collecting proofs that finite multiplicative subgroups of fields are cyclic

I actually think it will not be so easy to say when two proofs of this result will be "distinctly different": rather I expect most or all will have common features, including using at least a little b …
20 votes

Interesting Calculus Questions/Exercises

I have little personal experience with it, but some colleagues and friends hold the following text in high regard: Robert M. Young, Excursions in calculus. An interplay of the continuous and the …
23 votes

Elementary / Interesting proofs of the Nullstellensatz

I have been thinking about the question "What is the best -- i.e., some combination of shortest, most natural, easiest -- proof of the Nullstellensatz?" recently on the eve of a commutative algebra co …
2 votes

Applications of periodic continued fractions

There is a pleasant connection between (among?) Chebyshev polynomials, the Pell equation and continued fractions, the latter two being understood to take place in real quadratic function fields rather …
20 votes

Awfully sophisticated proof for simple facts

I claim that the rational canonical model of the modular curve $X(1) = \operatorname{SL}_2(\mathbb{Z}) \backslash \overline{\mathcal{H}}$ is isomorphic over $\mathbb{Q}$ to the projective line $\mathb …
41 votes

How to present mathematics to non-mathematicians?

For some reason, many mathematicians have trouble with the idea that when some layman asks them about their work, the appropriate response is not to try to figure out how to describe the latest theore …
52 votes

Most memorable titles

Finding composite order ordinary elliptic curves using the Cocks-Pinch method, by D. Boneh, K. Rubin and A. Silverberg. (To appear in the Journal of Number Theory.)
23 votes

Approaches to Riemann hypothesis using methods outside number theory

So far as I know, there is no approach to the Riemann Hypothesis which has been fleshed out far enough to get an even moderately skeptical expert to back it, with any odds whatsoever. I think this si …
Pete L. Clark's user avatar
11 votes

Algebraic geometry examples

One example which is (at least over an algebraically closed field) very classical, but contemporary geometers and number theorists do not seem to be as intimately familiar with is the geometry of curv …
5 votes

The best text to study both incompleteness theorems

For instance, there is a well-regarded recent book of Torkel Franzen: Gödel’s Theorem: An Incomplete Guide to Its Use and Abuse A detailed and positive review was given by Panu Raatikainen in th …
Pete L. Clark's user avatar
3 votes

Vector spaces without natural bases

Let $K$ be a field, let $S$ be a set, and consider the $K$-vector space $\operatorname{Map}(S,K)$ of all functions from $S$ to $K$. When $S$ is finite, $\operatorname{Map}(S,K)$ has a natural basis …
27 votes

Can a mathematical definition be wrong?

I think there are many examples, spread out across a continuum of how "wrong" the definition really was. Of course, strictly speaking a definition cannot be "wrong", or can only be wrong in the logic …

15 30 50 per page