It's interesting that mathematicians now feel a strong urge to put the word "human" in front of the word "proof".

Do you ever wish you could make two math books do the fusion dance with each other?

I had no idea the "NP vs P" problem was settled three years ago. (shoutout to @lukasmathgraf.bsky.social for spotting this)

What my brain actually does when it is supposed to be thinking about teaching Galois theory: I've heard it too many times to ignore it It's something that I'm supposed to be Someday I'll find it the Galois connection The subgroups The subfields And me La-da-da-de-da-da-do La-da-da-da-da-de-da-do

Flinching at yet another example of someone confusing "systematic" with "systemic".

"More generally, let me give you a specific example." -- Me, checking if my students notice anything

The mantra of field theory is "induct on the degree".

Follow-up question: When the area of the purple triangle is minimized, where is its rightmost vertex?

The Moon Theme from DuckTales

Dreamt that I had a rare illness requiring surgery. Two of the attending physicians were also academics and they were each writing papers about my case. They told me it was standard practice to include the patient as a coauthor. I said it wasn't necessary but they insisted.

"Dear Michael Kinyon, I hope this message finds you well. I am Dr. ##EditorName##" and I stopped reading

Rather than accomplish anything today, I'm just going to facilitate

Me: Wow, I just had an excellent research idea while folding the laundry! Spouse: That's great. In that case, instead of us taking turns, that will be your job from now on *walks away*. Me: ... what just happened

My plan B is to become ... a shrubber

I almost wish I hadn't done this because the song is stuck in my head now

Green teas are made of leaves Who am I to disbelieve I travel the world with my handy sieve Everybody's looking for sencha

I used to think I was unique. As I got older, I realized I was only unique up to isomorphism. Now I'm only unique up to coarse equivalence.

Every ad now

Here are all the ways I have typed the word "quadratic" today before editing: quadartic quadractic quadritic quardatic No, I'm not kidding. 🤦‍♂️

I have Donovan's "There is a Mountain" stuck in my head today.

I asked an AI for its opinion on the arXiv's new "no AI slop" policy and it said it's a very bad idea and to support its argument it cited a recent paper from the Journal of Completely True Things

algebra, analysis, combinatorics, geometry, number theory, topology

Proof: “Everything will turn out right, the world is built on that.” QED

Out of idle curiosity, I asked Google's Gemini to try to humanize a proof generated by an automated theorem prover. In short, it didn't do very well. But, uh, this bit was interesting...

I misread the title as Weil-Moore Anime and for a brief moment I was very excited

what my tinnitus sounds like

"'Bonvolu alsendi la pordiston? Lausajne estas rano en mia bideo!' And I think we all know what that means." -- Rimmer

In this accepted paper, I am editing the proofs and also editing the proofs.

My friend and coauthor Des MacHale sent me a copy of his book (coauthored with Yvonne Cohen) _New Light on George Boole_ (2018). I am looking forward to reading it.

* discussion of how to resolve a family issue * Nonmathematician spouse: Ah, ok, so this is both simple and solvable. Me: You mean it's cyclic of prime order? Spouse: What? Me: Sorry

"L'inconscient est structuré comme un grand modèle linguistique." -- Jacque Lacan, if he were alive today, maybe

Happy Motherer's Day

I will close my door to shut out all possible errors. "But how am I to enter in?" cried Truth. -- Rabindranath Tagore, Epigrams, 1917

Grading midterms My written comment: "You had the right idea on this problem; you just messed up some of the details." Translation: "Hoo boy..."

0! = 1 because if you shout "zero" everyone looks to see who is the 1 who shouted

Tim: Wilson, I'm trying to tutor this kid about the binomial theorem, but they don't get that it holds in any commutative ring. Wilson: Well, Tim, maybe you're trying to do things in too much generality T: You're right! I'll limit it to integral domains. Thanks, Wilson! W: That's not what I ...

This is the time of year when I am jealous of US universities on the semester system. We still have a month to go.

Before you are two doors. The doors are guarded by two statues. One statue always tells the truth, the other is an AI.

Back in my day, LMS meant least mean squares. *shakes cane, yells at cloud*

Without Canvas, how will I ever remember the names of the 8 students in my class?

We need more of this. Law of L'Hôpital Law of Simpson Law of Chain and of course, that useful device Law of Slide

A brand new diamond open-access math journal for students to publish in. Could be good! journals.calstate.edu/im

Until I have more caffeine, all proofs today will be by exhaustion.

To clarify, when I said source, I meant *my* source. I wasn't aware of it before. Lyndon and Newman don't claim originality. I would guess it dates to Phillip Hall's work. Interestingly, [[x,y],[z,u]] can be expressed as product of 14 cubes! It's not known if fewer cubes will do the job.

Theorem: A group satisfying z^2 = 1 for all z is abelian. Proof: For all x,y, x^{-1}y^{-1}xy = (x^{-1}y^{-1})^2 (yxy^{-1})^2 y^2. Source for the identity: R.C. Lyndon and M. Newman, Commutators as products of squares, Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 30 (1973), no. 2, 267-272.

Slightly diminish a book. The Straightble

"Paper and pens", bah! In my day we used charcoal and the back of a shovel.

Without loss of specificity, we assume whatever we need to get this damn proof to work.

I consume mine with fava beans and a nice chianti

About a year ago, I gave a similar poll (with anonymous voting) asking a class which symbol they preferred. I showed them the symbols themselves, not the LaTeX code. The *unanimous* choice (out of 20 students) was \varnothing.