Author Archives: Persiflage

Mathieu Magic

I previously mentioned that I once made (in a footnote) the false claim that for a 11-dimensional representation V of the Mathieu group M_12, the 120 dimensional representation Ad^0(V) was irreducible. I had wanted to write down representations W of … Continue reading

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Commuting

I found out a good way to describe how long my commute is: about three minutes more than the length of the second movement of Beethoven’s 9th (the greatest movement!) On the other hand, that measure proved inaccurate the very … Continue reading

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Swimming Leaderboard

The first rule of number theory swim club is…talk about number theory swim club! Anyone can join, as long as you are a number theorist at the University of Chicago with a current gym membership. The standard meeting time is … Continue reading

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The True Heirs To Ramanujan

If you are in need of some light relief, you could do worse than peruse the opinions of Doron Zeilberger, who, if viewed strictly through the lens of these ramblings, appears to have a relationship with theoretical mathematics something along … Continue reading

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Public Displays of Mathematics

Let me start by saying that I’m in favor of making the effort to both educate the public about mathematics (as well as science more generally) and to convey to them a sense of the excitement of our discipline. But … Continue reading

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MSRI Now

Continuing on the theme of the last post (Buzzard related viral videos), you can now view Buzzard’s MSRI course (in progress at the time of this post) online here. Having previously excoriated MSRI for restricting how many people can attend … Continue reading

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Redraw the Balance

This video would be inspiring even if it didn’t star someone that I know: I suspect that Tamzin’s other youtube video will probably not end up with 20+ million views, being somewhat more…technical, I guess you could say. Of course, … Continue reading

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New Results in Modularity, Part II

This is part two of series on work in progress with Patrick Allen, Ana Caraiani, Toby Gee, David Helm, Bao Le Hung, James Newton, Peter Scholze, Richard Taylor, and Jack Thorne. Click here for Part I It has been almost … Continue reading

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New Results In Modularity, Part I

I usually refrain from talking directly about my papers, and this reticence stems from wishing to avoid any appearance of tooting my own horn. On the other hand, nobody else seems to be talking about them either. Moreover, I have … Continue reading

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In defense of Theresa May

Nothing gives me more sympathy for Theresa May^* (or less respect for the Economist) than the following line from this article: Mrs May made do with a dowdier college and relaxed by watching “The Goodies”, a particularly dire comedy. Sacrilege! … Continue reading

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