Recent Comments
Category Archives: What is Mathematics
To cheer you up in difficult times 33: Deep learning leads to progress in knot theory and on the conjecture that Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials are combinatorial.
One of the exciting directions regarding applications of computers in mathematics is to use them to experimentally form new conjectures. Google’s DeepMind launched an endeavor for using machine learning (and deep learning in particular) for finding conjectures based on data. Two … Continue reading
Posted in Algebra, Combinatorics, Geometry, What is Mathematics
8 Comments
Alef’s Corner: QED (two versions)
QED: Version 2
To Cheer You Up in Difficult Times 31: Federico Ardila’s Four Axioms for Cultivating Diversity
Todos Cuentan (Everybody counts) In a beautiful NAMS 2016 article Todos Cuentan: Cultivating Diversity in Combinatorics, Federico Ardila put forward four thoughtful axioms which became a useful foundation for Ardila’s own educational and outreach efforts, and were offered as a pressing … Continue reading
Posted in Academics, Combinatorics, What is Mathematics, Women in science
Tagged diversity, Federico Ardila
12 Comments
To cheer you up in difficult times 27: A major recent “Lean” proof verification
“Lean is a functional programming language that makes it easy to write correct and maintainable code. You can also use Lean as an interactive theorem prover.” (See Lean’s homepage and see here for an introduction to lean.) Kevin Buzzard’s blog … Continue reading
Posted in Algebra, Updates, What is Mathematics
Tagged Kevin Buzzard, Lean, Peter Scholze
4 Comments
To cheer you up in difficult times 23: the original hand-written slides of Terry Tao’s 2015 Einstein Lecture in Jerusalem
In 2015 Terry Tao gave the Einstein lecture of the Israeli Academy for Science and Humanities. We got hold of the original signed hand-written slides of Terry’s lecture and we are happy to share them with you. The title of … Continue reading
The probabilistic proof that 2^400-593 is a prime: a revolutionary new type of mathematical proof, or not a proof at all?
Avi Wigderson gave a great CS colloquium talk at HUJI on Monday (a real auditorium talk with an audience of about 200 people). The title of the talk was The Value of Errors in Proofs – a fascinating journey from … Continue reading
What is mathematics (or at least, how it feels)
(I suppose that this amazing picture can serve as a metaphor also for life, for science, for human rights, for happiness and for a variety of other things.) Picture: AFP Suez Canal: the Ever Green ship blockage.
Combinatorics and more 