历史与综述

We propose in this paper a theoretical approach of teachers' professional development, focusing on teachers' interactions with resources, digital resources in particular. Documents, entailing resources and schemes of utilization of these…

Permutation matrices play an important role in understand the structure of magic squares. In this work, we use a class of symmetric permutation matrices than can be used to categorize magic squares. Many magic squares with a high degree of…

We examine alternative interpretations of the symbol described as nought, point, nine recurring. Is "an infinite number of 9s" merely a figure of speech? How are such alternative interpretations related to infinite cardinalities? How are…

The aim of this short note is to realize that the main reason for non-mechanistic explanation of Newton's gravitational attraction, is explicitly encapsulated in his famous General Scholium of the second Edition of Principia Mathematica…

In the following article a Ph.D. student of V.I.~Arnold gives a personal account on his teacher who unexpectedly passed away earlier this year.

We consider issues related to the origins, sources and initial motivations of the theory of Hopf algebras. We consider the two main sources of primeval development: algebraic topology and algebraic group theory. Hopf algebras are named from…

The following notes are intended to make a small digression on the topics mentioned in the title of the same, since these were not addressed in the past tribute by the Institute of Physics of the UdeA. We believe more than platitude try to…

We start by presenting a theory of finite sets using the approach which is essentially that taken by Whitehead and Russell in Principia Mathematica}, and which does not involve the natural numbers (or any other infinite set). This theory is…

If the cosine of a rational multiple of $\pi$ is a rational number then it is an integral multiple of $\frac12$. For this fact, we give a proof accessible to an interested school student. We then discuss which quadratic and cubic…

A new idea for a binary clock is presented. It displays the time using a triangular array of 15 bits. It is shown that such a geometric, triangular arrangement is only possible because our system of time divisions is based on a sexagesimal…

This article gives a short sketch of the origins of Virasoro cocycle, both in algebra and quantum field theory.

This paper has been withdrawn

This is a translation from the Latin of Euler's "Problema algebraicum de inveniendis quatuor numeris ex datis totidem productis uniuscuiusque horum numerorum in summas trium reliquorum", Opera Postuma 1 (1862), 282-287, reprinted in…

This article is a collection of letters solicited by the editors of the Bulletin in response to a previous article by Jaffe and Quinn [math.HO/9307227]. The authors discuss the role of rigor in mathematics and the relation between…

Ever since it was published by Neugebauer and Sachs in 1945, the Old Babylonian tablet known as Plimpton 322 has been the subject of numerous studies leading to different and often conflicting interpretations of it. Overall, the tablet is…

This article was written on the occasion of Hans Grauert receiving the Cantor Medallion of the Deutsche Mathematische Vereinigung. It is a brief overview of his mathematical contributions and attempts to convey the author's great respect…

Take a large bag of black and white beans, with all possible proportions considered initially equally likely, and imagine to make random extractions with reintroduction. Twenty consecutive observations of black make us highly confident that…

A review of the connections between K_2 of a field and universal central extensions, quadratic forms, central simple algebras, differential forms, abelian extensions, abelian coverings, explicit reciprocity laws, special values of zeta…

The ancient unsolved problem of congruent numbers has been reduced to one of the major questions of contemporary arithmetic: the finiteness of the number of curves over $\bf Q$ which become isomorphic at every place to a given curve. We…

The view of infinity as a metaphor, a basic premise of modern cognitive theory of embodied knowledge, suggests in particular that there may be alternative ways in which one could formalize mathematical ideas about infinity. We discuss the…