Author Archives: Persiflage

This year in Jerusalem

Posted on January 27, 2018 by Persiflage

I just returned from spending almost a week in Jerusalem (my first ever visit to Israel). The main reason for my visit was to talk with Alex Lubotzky (and Shai Evra) about mathematics, but there was plenty of time for … Continue reading →

Posted in Travel | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

The paramodular conjecture is false for trivial reasons

Posted on January 15, 2018 by Persiflage

(This is part of a series of occasional posts discussing results and observations in my joint paper with Boxer, Gee, and Pilloni mentioned here.) Brumer and Kramer made a conjecture positing a bijection between isogeny classes of abelian surfaces \(A/\mathbf{Q}\) … Continue reading →

Posted in Mathematics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Hiring Season

Posted on January 7, 2018 by Persiflage

Lizard 1: Wait, explain again why we bury our young in the sand and thereby place them into mortal peril? Lizard 2: So they develop character! If it was good enough for me, it’s good enough for them. (Feel free … Continue reading →

Posted in Mathematics, Politics, Rant, Travel | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Abandonware

Posted on December 25, 2017 by Persiflage

For a young mathematician, there is a lot of pressure to publish (or perish). The role of for-profit academic publishing is to publish large amounts of crappy mathematics papers, make a lot of money, but at least in return grant … Continue reading →

Posted in Mathematics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

The ABC conjecture has (still) not been proved

Posted on December 17, 2017 by Persiflage

The ABC conjecture has (still) not been proved. Five years ago, Cathy O’Neil laid out a perfectly cogent case for why the (at that point recent) claims by Shinichi Mochizuki should not (yet) be regarded as constituting a proof of … Continue reading →

Posted in Mathematics, Politics, Rant | Tagged , , | 34 Comments

Graduation Day

Posted on November 26, 2017 by Persiflage

This last summer, I undertook my last official activity as a faculty member at Northwestern University, namely, graduation day! (I had a 0% courtesy appointment for two years until my last Northwestern students graduated.) Here I am with four of … Continue reading →

Posted in Mathematics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Abelian Surfaces are Potentially Modular

Posted on November 11, 2017 by Persiflage

Today I wanted (in the spirit of this post) to report on some new work in progress with George Boxer, Toby Gee, and Vincent Pilloni. Edit: The paper is now available here. Recal that, for a smooth projective variety X … Continue reading →

Posted in Mathematics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

Jobs Related Public Service Announcements

Posted on November 4, 2017 by Persiflage

Job season is upon us. Now is probably a good time to give applicants (and letter writers!) a few pointers. Of course, there are many other sources of advice on this topic, so let me try to narrow the focus … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Schaefer and Stubley on Class Groups

Posted on October 28, 2017 by Persiflage

I talked previously about work of Wake and Wang-Erickson on deformations of Eisenstein residual representations. In that post, I also mentioned a paper of Emmanuel Lecouturier who has also proved some very interesting theorems. Today, I wanted to talk about … Continue reading →

Posted in Mathematics, Students | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

J’accuse!

Posted on October 21, 2017 by Persiflage

I found the following documentary remarkable and quite interesting. Without offering here any opinion on its merits, I certainly give it credit for taking an unpopular position and sticking with it. This blog is no stranger to challenging perceived wisdom, … Continue reading →

Posted in Music | Tagged , , | 4 Comments