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 78

Questions that are about research in mathematics, or about the job of a research mathematician, without being mathematical problems or statements in the strictest sense. Do not use this tag for easy or supposedly easy mathematical questions.

31 votes

A single paper everyone should read?

One paper that I want to share with any of my colleagues, although it is not in my field, is Doyle and Conway, Division by Three, math/0605779v1. To emphasize why this paper is so great, let me quote …
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
35 votes

Examples of great mathematical writing

Proofs from the Book, Martin Aigner, Günter M. Ziegler, 2000. Anyone in [mathematics] who hasn't read this [book] has led an impoverished existence.
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
2 votes

Should the "L" in the term latin/Latin square be capitalized?

A close mathematician friend of mine used to try to stick to the rule of capitalizing any word that derives from a person's name: Noetherian (not "noetherian") ring, Abelian (not "abelian") group, etc …
Theo Johnson-Freyd's user avatar
8 votes

Which nice/deep elaborations on the (operators <-> sheaves) / (endomorphisms <-> objects) th...

What you describe in the opening of your question is most naturally an equivalence of categories, not some dimension-shifting thing between endomorphisms and objects as you suggest. Indeed, let $\mat …
Theo Johnson-Freyd's user avatar
18 votes

Favorite popular math book

Title: The Symmetries of Things Authors: John Horton Conway, Heidi Burgiel, and Chaim Goodman-Strauss Description: The authors begin by introducing the general concept of geometric symmetry / regu …
Soham Chowdhury's user avatar
37 votes

Intuition behind the definition of quantum groups

Here is an answer to question (1). I recommend that you split of question (2) as a separate question. Define the quantum plane to be the "spectrum" of the noncommutative ring $\mathbb K\langle x,y\r …
Theo Johnson-Freyd's user avatar
138 votes
Accepted

What is Quantization ?

As I'm sure you'll see from the many answers you'll get, there are lots of notions of "quantization". Here's another perspective. Recall the primary motivation of, say, algebraic geometry: a geometr …
Eric Peterson's user avatar
13 votes
Accepted

On mentioning recommenders' names in cover letter for postdoctoral applications

I have made my answer CW, because I believe the question should be. My answer should carry very little weight, because I have never served on a postdoc committee: I am in my final months as a graduat …
Theo Johnson-Freyd's user avatar
11 votes

Discovering and selecting conferences

Preamble: I am a graduate student at a large program, about to start a postdoc, so I can speak about what has worked for me at the (hopefully) beginning of my career. One thing I do occasionally is t …
Theo Johnson-Freyd's user avatar
9 votes

Impact of LHC on math ?

I am not an expert on the following aspect of LHC, so I'll bring it up but hope others will elaborate (feel free to use the community wiki features!): One of the major contributions of LHC has been t …
Theo Johnson-Freyd's user avatar
17 votes
Accepted

Convenient definition of "category of Riemannian manifolds"?

I'm sure the answer to your question is "it depends on the application". Here are three categories that come to (my idiosyncratic) mind. Perhaps the most general category in the direction you're loo …
Theo Johnson-Freyd's user avatar
21 votes

Examples of seemingly elementary problems that are hard to solve?

I will list two very hard problems in linear algebra, that are in fact closely related. Recall that the cross product of vectors in $\mathbb R^3$ is not associative, and so if I write $v_1 \times v_ …
Theo Johnson-Freyd's user avatar
0 votes

Jordan Curve Theorem for Manifolds

Alexander's horned sphere (Wikipedia) shows that even when the first part of your conjecture (1) holds, you cannot expect the second part to. The horned sphere is a continuous embedding $\mathbb S^2 …
Theo Johnson-Freyd's user avatar
2 votes

2-morphisms in structured 2-categories

Let me focus in on your third example, but I'll also wave at your other two. Here's everything in full: A symmetric strong monoidal category consists of: 0-morphisms: a category $C$. 1-morphisms: …
Theo Johnson-Freyd's user avatar
16 votes

Are there any good websites for hosting discussions of mathematical papers?

I'm pretty sure the answer to the question as asked is "No". At present there does not seem to exist a unique web location dedicated to discussing each individual mathematical article. It would be t …
Theo Johnson-Freyd's user avatar

15 30 50 per page