Funny true story

I’ve heard several good stories at the math workshop I am attending currently but this one takes the cake.
Famous old mathematician asks a certain female international grad student in his depaterment how she likes it there.
FIGS: Oh it’s great. Except for the cocks.
FOM: Cocks?
FIGS: Yes cocks! There are too many cocks in my bedroom.
FOM is [...]

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The moment it clicks

One of the most beautiful aspects of doing math is the flash of insight that lets you out of a mental block.
This may appear surprising to those not in the field but the fact is that research mathematicians fumble around looking for the light switch in a dark room for much of their waking hours. [...]

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Still up at 2 am

If  there’s one thing about my academic life I hate with honest fury, it is the act of grading large stacks of homework. Painful, tedious work that kills you from deep inside every time.

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The stressful process of job applications

Seventeen postdoc apps sent off, (around) thirty more to go. Thankfully, the whole process is free and (mostly) automatic. I love Mathjobs.
I hope to come out of hibernation some time next week.

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The real winner of this election

Andrew Sullivan is effusive in his praise of Five Thirty Eight, the polling aggregation and analysis website created by Nate Silver:
The only state their model got wrong was Indiana, where they expected a narrow Obama loss. He won the state by a hair. Nate Silver owned this election on the polling front: one young guy [...]

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Oklahoma visit

Apologies to the reader for the small number of posts here this week. I was at the University of Oklahoma for a math visit from Tuesday to Friday.
It was a fruitful visit. I gave a couple of talks and discussed a lot of number theory. In many ways the whole thing, especially the math discussion, [...]

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Frenchmen and math

“Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them, they translate it into their own language, and forthwith it means something entirely different.“
– Goethe

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The pursuit of science and an old email

I stumbled upon an old email today. It was written by me in December 2001. That’s very long ago, isn’t it?
***
Suppose you ask me today … (no, this is not part of the email)
So, what’s worth pursuing?
Well, scientific knowledge is worth pursuing.
What about happiness, money, comfort, security?
Sure, all those too.
But what’s most worth pursuing?
Dude, it’s [...]

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Update on Riemann hypothesis

A couple of days ago, I wrote about Xian-Jin Li’s claimed proof of the Riemann hypothesis. Here are matters as they stand now:
Li’s preprint on the arXiv is now up to version 4. The initial problem identified by Terry Tao is now fixed; however a more serious problem pointed out by Alain Connes remains. Basically, [...]

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Another attempted proof of the Riemann hypothesis

They keep cranking them out, don’t they?
Of course, there is the minutest possibility that this time its for real, but just going by history, I am prepared to bet all my savings against it.
Update: I apologize if my post seems to suggest that Xian-Jin Li, the author of the purported proof, is a crank. In fact, he is [...]

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Number theory for the mathematically curious

Most people, on coming to know that I do research in pure math, respond with a nod or a wide-eyed, “Ohh, that must be so hard!” Occasionally however, someone goes further and asks me what my research is really about. And then, I am usually in a fix.
How do I respond? There’s no way to [...]

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Free to create

“The essence of mathematics lies in its freedom.”
- George Cantor.

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Grad life, blogging, mathematics and Mozart

I haven’t had much time to blog this weekend. Ideas for posts came and went. News broke, and got stale. I gave them all a haughty ignore and, with single minded devotion, concentrated on my L-functions.
One of the drawbacks of being a fourth year grad student is that you need to do a lot of research quickly enough [...]

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The critic and the creator

“It is a melancholy experience for a professional mathematician to find himself writing about mathematics. The function of a mathematician is to do something, to prove new theorems, to add to mathematics, and not to talk about what he or other mathematicians have done. Statesmen despise publicists, painters despise art-critics, and physiologists, physicists, or mathematicians [...]

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Mathiness

This term looks rather busy. I am taking two (possibly three) classes and teaching one. Blogging is likely to suffer as a result.
I am excited about the class I am teaching. It’s called “How to solve it” and teaches techniques for solving mathematical problems. It also doubles up as a training program for the Putnam [...]

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