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History and philosophy of mathematics, biographies of mathematicians, mathematics education, recreational mathematics, communication of mathematics.

152 votes
26 answers
39k views

Has philosophy ever clarified mathematics?

I've recently been reading some standard textbooks on the philosophy of mathematics, and I've become quite frustrated that (surely due to my own limitations) I don't seem to be gleaning any mathematic …
70 votes
6 answers
28k views

What are Jacob Lurie's key insights?

This question is inspired by this Tim Gowers blogpost. I have some familiarity with the work of Jacob Lurie, which contains ideas which are simply astounding; but what I don't understand is which key …
Daniel Moskovich's user avatar
47 votes
4 answers
5k views

What is the source of this famous Grothendieck quote?

I've seen the following quote many times on the internet, and have used it myself. It is usually attributed to Grothendieck. It is better to have a good category with bad objects than a bad category …
Daniel Moskovich's user avatar
39 votes
6 answers
6k views

Who invented diagrammatic algebra?

There is a strong and growing trend to do mathematics via diagrammatic algebra, which involves constructing and manipulating equations whose elements are diagrams drawn in the plane. The manipulations …
Daniel Moskovich's user avatar
13 votes
6 answers
1k views

Proof by `universal receiver'

Anyone following the news knows about the major breakthoughs that have taken place recently in $3$-manifold topology. These have come via a route whose big-picture I find to be conceptually interestin …
8 votes
2 answers
836 views

Reference request for relative bordism coinciding with homology in low dimensions

It's a standard fact that, for finite CW complexes, the relative (edit: oriented) bordism group $\Omega_n(X,A)$ coincides with the homology $[H_\ast(X,A;\Omega_\ast(pt))]_n\simeq H_n(X,A)$ for $n<5$ ( …
Daniel Moskovich's user avatar