Related papers: Odd One Out
A perfect number is a number whose divisors add up to twice the number itself. The existence of odd perfect numbers is a millennia-old unsolved problem. This note proposes a proof of the nonexistence of odd perfect numbers. More generally,…
This is an expanded version of a write-up of a talk given in the fall of 2000 in Oberwolfach. A large part of it is intended to be understandable by non-number theorists with a mathematical background. The talk covered some of the history,…
This paper is a short historical note about the origin of the Pole-Barn and the Fat Man Paradoxes
Several different "hat games" have recently received a fair amount of attention. Typically, in a hat game, one or more players are required to correctly guess their hat colour when given some information about other players' hat colours.…
In a delightful article that recently appeared in the American Mathematics Monthly, Norbert Henze and Guenter Last discuss the "Absent-Minded Passengers" Problem, but left open finding an explicit expression for the probability generating…
In this talk I make some remarks about the search for the origin of the electroweak scale.
In this paper, we consider certain finite sums related to the "largest odd divisor", and we obtain, using simple ideas and recurrence relations, sharp upper and lower bounds for these sums.
The main objective of this paper is the following two results. (1) There exists a computable bi-orderable group that does not have a computable bi-ordering; (2) There exists a bi-orderable, two-generated recursively presented solvable group…
This survey contains a recollection of results, problems and conversations which go back to the early years of Representation Theory and Tilting Theory.
In \cite{entombed}, John Aycock and Tara Copplestone pose an open question, namely the explanation of the mysterious lookup table used in the Entombed Game's Algorithm for two dimensional maze generation. The question attracted media…
In this manuscript we provide a new polynomial pattern. This pattern allows to find a polynomial expansion of the form \[x^{2m+1} = \sum_{k=1}^{x}\sum_{r=0}^{m} \mathbf{A}_{m,r} k^r (x-k)^r,\] where $x,m\in\mathbb{N}$ and $\mathbf{A}_{m,r}$…
The term Gibbons conjecture is widely used in connection with symmetry results for the Allen-Cahn equation. However, its origin is less transparent than its frequent citation suggests. In this note, we revisit its emergence, tracing it to a…
Magnitude is a measure of size defined for certain classes of metric spaces; it arose from ideas in category theory. In particular, magnitude is defined for compact subsets of Euclidean space and, in arXiv:1507.02502, Barcel\'o and Carbery…
An attempt to come closer to a resolution of the Collatz conjecture is presented. The central idea is the formation of a tree consisting of positive odd numbers with number 1 as root. Functions for generating the tree from the root are…
Quantum weirdness has been in the news recently, thanks to an ingenious new experiment by a team led by Roland Hanson, at the Delft University of Technology. Much of the coverage presents the experiment as good (even conclusive) news for…
In his 2003 paper "Towards an algebraic theory of Boolean circuits", Lafont notes that the class of reversible circuits over a set of k truth values is finitely generated when k is odd. He cites a private communication for the proof. The…
Recently, the educational initiative TED-Ed has published a popular brain teaser coined the 'frog riddle', which illustrates non-intuitive implications of conditional probabilities. In its intended form, the frog riddle is a reformulation…
Let $G$ be a group of odd order and $\chi$ be a complex irreducible character. Then there exists a unique character $\chi^{(2)}\in\Irr(G)$ such that $[\chi^2,\chi^{(2)}]$ is odd. Also, there exists a unique character $\psi\in \Irr(G)$ such…
This paper is the second part of an introduction to linear logic and ludics, both due to Girard. It is devoted to proof nets, in the limited, yet central, framework of multiplicative linear logic and to ludics, which has been recently…
I review the works of G\"ardenfors (1990) and Scorzato (2013) and show that their combination provides an elegant solution of Goodman's new riddle of induction. The solution is based on two main ideas: (1) clarifying what is expected from a…