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I came across this “one sentence” proof that every prime congruent to 1 mod 4 can be written as a sum of two squares: https://doi.org/10.2307/2323918 The proof involves constructing the following cryptic involution $$ (x, y, . . . Read more

We use integers so much in math that it never occurred to me before yesterday that this is a weird word with a weirder symbol associated to it. Wikipedia explains this very nicely. The words integer and entire sh . . . Read more

I’ve always been fascinated by the history of mathematics. Some of the classic and dramatic discoveries I read a kid were those of non-Euclidean geometry, Galois theory, the proof of Fermat’s last theorem, as well as Cantor and Gödel’s breakthroughs in logic. However, some of the more commo . . . Read more

Someone had gifted me this book as a kid, I do not remember who or when, I think it was my maths teacher. I remember Hawking says in his book, that adding equations to books decreases their popularity. I remember not particularly liking this. But I also remember reading, for th . . . Read more

I was attending the Science of Learning Symposium at JHU, which is usually quite fascinating, but was very boring this year. These are the things that frustrate . . . Read more