Related papers: De Divino Errore
Published exactly seventy years ago, Jeffreys's Theory of Probability (1939) has had a unique impact on the Bayesian community and is now considered to be one of the main classics in Bayesian Statistics as well as the initiator of the…
What can physics students learn about science from those scientists who got the answers wrong? Students encounter little science history, and what they have encountered typically portrays scientists as The People with the Right Answers. But…
Professor Sir Karl Popper (1902-1994) was one of the most influential philosophers of science of the twentieth century, best known for his doctrine of falsifiability. His axiomatic formulation of probability, however, is unknown to current…
Classical statistics and Bayesian statistics refer to the frequentist and subjective theories of probability respectively. Von Mises and De Finetti, who authored those conceptualizations, provide interpretations of the probability that…
For any sufficiently strong theory of arithmetic, the set of Diophantine equations provably unsolvable in the theory is algorithmically undecidable, as a consequence of the MRDP theorem. In contrast, we show decidability of Diophantine…
Pierre van Hiele (1909-2010) suggested, both in 1957 and later repeatedly, wide application for the Van Hiele levels in insight, both for more disciplines and for different subjects in mathematics. David Tall (2013) suggests that Van Hiele…
"The hardest logic puzzle ever" presented by George Boolos became a target for philosophers and logicians who tried to modify it and make it even tougher. I propose further modification of the original puzzle where part of the available…
Among the geniuses of mankind, Einstein was probably one of those who made more erroneous claims, and often changed his opinion during the years on important scientific subjects. However, it is important to bear in mind that his mistakes…
This is a companion to a paper by the authors entitled "G\"odel on deduction", which examined the links between some philosophical views ascribed to G\"odel and general proof theory. When writing that other paper, the authors were not…
The fact that the famous Godel incompleteness theorem and the archetype of all logical paradoxes, that of the Liar, are related closely is, of course, not only well known, but is a part of the common knowledge of logician community.…
The paper titled "Cremona problem in dimension 2" by W. Bartenwerfer presented a flawed attempt at proving the Jacobian Conjecture. Our aim is to provide a thorough analysis of the author's approach, highlighting the errors that were made…
Of the $(2H+1)^n$ monic integer polynomials $f(x)=x^n+a_1 x^{n-1}+\cdots+a_n$ with $\max\{|a_1|,\ldots,|a_n|\}\leq H$, how many have associated Galois group that is not the full symmetric group $S_n$? There are clearly $\gg H^{n-1}$ such…
We consider the problem of finding the probability that a random triangle is obtuse, which was first raised by Lewis Caroll. Our investigation leads us to a natural correspondence between plane polygons and the Grassmann manifold of…
Charles L. Dodgson, also known as Lewis Carroll, in his book "Pillow problems" from 1893 asked for the likelihood of a random triangle to be obtuse. Clearly, the answer to Dodgson's question depends strongly on the assumed random…
This article is the first part of a study of the so-called 'mathematical part' of Plato's Theaetetus (147d-148b). The subject of this 'mathematical part' is the irrationality, one of the most important topics in early Greek mathematics. As…
We collect a number of open questions concerning Diophantine equations, Diophantine Approximation and transcendental numbers. Revised version: corrected typos and added references.
The basic notions of logic-predicate logic, Peano arithmetic, incompleteness theorems, etc.-have for long been an advanced topic. In the last decades, they became more widely taught, inphilosophy, mathematics, and computer science…
Although the categorical arithmetic is not effectively axiomatizable, the belief that the incompleteness Theorems can be apply to it is fairly common. Furthermore, the so-called "essential" (or "inherent") semantic incompleteness of the…
Euler gives a long introduction, giving all the arguments for and against the use of divergent series in calculus and then gives his own definition of the sum of a diverging series. Then in the second half of this paper he evaluates the the…
Einstein initially objected to the probabilistic aspect of quantum mechanics - the idea that God is playing at dice. Later he changed his ground, and focussed instead on the point that the Copenhagen Interpretation leads to what Einstein…