Random pro-p groups, braid groups, and random tame Galois groups

27Oct09

I’ve posted a new paper with Nigel Boston, “Random pro-p groups, braid groups, and random tame Galois groups.” The paper proposes a kind of “non-abelian Cohen-Lenstra heuristic.”   A typical prediction:  if S is a randomly chosen pair of primes, each of which is congruent to 5 mod 8, and G_S(p) is the Galois group of [...]

Filed under: math, papers   |  2 Comments
Tags: algebraic geometry, boston, braid group, cohen-lenstra, function fields, galois groups, galois theory, number theory, pro-p groups

Math And: Arielle Saiber on Italian poetry and Italian algebra, Friday, Oct 23 at 4pm

22Oct09

Something to do tomorrow (besides eating the Beef n Brew slice): the Math And… seminar is very pleased to welcome Arielle Saiber from Bowdoin for our Fall 2009 lecture.  Arielle is an Italianist of very broad interests, with academic papers on Italian literature, the early history of algebra and geometry, Dali’s illustrations for Dante, and [...]

Filed under: history, madison, math, poetry   |  2 Comments
Tags: algebra, arielle saiber, cubic equations, history of math, italian, lectures, math and, tartaglia

Two good things I ate this week

22Oct09

Yesterday, a bowl of gumbo from New Orleans Take Out on Monroe.  So richly spiced as to be almost black, so thick with roux and file that it was almost not a soup.  This is non-traditional but I crumbled up and added my sweet cornbread to make of it a kind of granular black spicy [...]

Filed under: food, madison   |  1 Comment
Tags: gumbo, ian's, new orleans take out, pizza, restaurants

Modern game

19Oct09

We went to Cambridge, WI yesterday for a very worthwhile tour of Hinchley’s Dairy Farm.  To give you a bit of a break from cow-cow-cow they have a little menagerie of goats, rabbits, and poultry you can feed, including a modern game bantam.  The still picture doesn’t really capture how weird these things are to [...]

Filed under: cj, madison, travel   |  1 Comment
Tags: cambridge wi, chicken, dairy, modern game, mrs. q, wisconsin

Brothers

18Oct09

Just finished and very much enjoyed Yu Hua’s Brothers, China’s all-time best-selling novel.  If you’re going to read one long translated work of fiction in the social-magical-realism mode this year, make Hua’s book the one.  Especially if you like lots of bathroom jokes swirled into your multigenerational sagas of love and capital.  The translation, by [...]

Filed under: books   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: brothers, china, novels, translation, yu hua

Why Math Overflow works, and why it might not

17Oct09

I spent a bunch of time yesterday playing with Math Overflow, the new math Q&A website launched last week by Berkeley grad students David Brown and Anton Gerashchenko. The site is built on the popular Stack Exchange platform, giving users the power not only to ask and answer questions but to vote on other people’s [...]

Filed under: math, psychology   |  7 Comments
Tags: internet, math overflow, polymath

Anabelian puzzle 5: isogenies between Jacobians and metabelian fundamental groups

15Oct09

Another question that came up at the Newton Insitute:  can two different curves X,Y over F_q have the same geometrically metabelian pro-l fundamental group? I would think not, and here’s why.  First of all, the actions of Frob_q on H_1(X,Z_ell) and on H_1(Y,Z_ell) agree.  This already implies that Jac(X) and Jac(Y) are isogenous.  Can this [...]

Filed under: math   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: anabelian, anabelian puzzle, curves, fundamental groups, jacobians

Road trip!

12Oct09

Steve was talking about the future of poetry at the Twin Cities Book Fest this weekend, so CJ and I hopped up for the weekend to see him and his family.  A few notes: Priceline works!  I’ve never used them before, I suppose because it’s rare I’m traveling not for work and not staying with [...]

Filed under: books, children, cj, commerce, food, friends, music, poetry, shows, travel   |  8 Comments
Tags: coffee house press, hotels, minneapolis, minnesota, norske nook, pie, priceline, road trip, the phone inside your ribcage, they might be giants, tmbg, zombies

Sex advice from mathematicians

09Oct09

Nerve.com finally consults the real experts.

Filed under: magazines, math   |  2 Comments
Tags: advice, sex

How it was with tobacco

07Oct09

I was looking through old issues of Fact for a book review by Gershon Legman, and came across this, from the March-April 1964 issue: Writing about lung cancer in Cosmopolitan a few years ago, Gordon and Kenneth Boggs reported:  “Now that the furor has died down and experts have had time to examine the supposedly [...]

Filed under: ethics, history, magazines, offhand, politics   |  1 Comment
Tags: cosmopolitan, fact, smoking, tobacco