Unanswered Questions
51,796 questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
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Are we better in computing integrals than mathematicians of 19th century?
When I started to learn mathematics, I was fascinating by legendary «Демидович»: problems in mathematical analysis. Fifteen years later, when I open chapters about integrals, I see a long list of ...
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A kaleidoscopic coloring of the plane
Problem. Is there a partition $\mathbb R^2=A\sqcup B$ of the Euclidean plane into two Lebesgue measurable sets such that for any disk $D$ of the unit radius we get $\lambda(A\cap D)=\lambda(B\cap D)=\...
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Homotopy type of TOP(4)/PL(4)
It is known (e.g. the Kirby-Siebenmann book) that $\mathrm{TOP}(n)/\mathrm{PL}(n)\simeq K({\mathbb Z}/2,3)$ for $n>4$. I believe it is also known (Freedman-Quinn) that $\mathrm{TOP}(4)/\mathrm{PL}(...
CommunityBot
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What does the theta divisor of a number field know about its arithmetic?
This question is about a remark made by van der Geer and Schoof in their beautiful article "Effectivity of Arakelov divisors and the theta divisor of a number field" (from '98) (link).
Let ...
CommunityBot
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Why are there so few quaternionic representations of simple groups?
Having spent many hours looking through the Atlas of Finite Simple Groups while in Grad school, I recall being rather intrigued by the fact that among the sporadic groups, only one (McLaughlin as I ...
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Is this generalized character always a character?
Let $G$ be a finite group, and $p$ be a prime. Then there is a generalized character $\Psi$ of $G$ which takes value $0$ on all elements of order divisible by $p$, and has $\Psi(y)$ equal to the ...
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Converse of the Archimedean property of the sphere
In his remarkable book On the Sphere and Cylinder, where he came tantalizingly close to discovering calculus, Archimedes showed that the area of the portion of the sphere contained between a pair of ...
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Is there anything to the obvious analogy between Joyal's combinatorial species and Goodwillie calculus?
Combinatorial species and calculus of functors both take the viewpoint that many interesting functors can be expanded in a kind of Taylor series. Many operations familiar from actual calculus can be ...
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Minimal volume of 4-manifolds
This question came up in a talk of Dieter Kotschick yesterday. The minimal volume of a manifold is the infimum of volumes of Riemannian metrics on the manifold with sectional curvatures bounded in ...
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Homology of $\mathrm{PGL}_2(F)$
Update: As mentioned below, the answer to the original question is a strong No. However, the case of $\pi_4$ remains, and actually I think that this one would follow from Suslin's conjecture on ...
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Is there any positive integer sequence $c_{n+1}=\frac{c_n(c_n+n+d)}n$?
In a recent answer Max Alekseyev provided two recurrences of the form mentioned in the title which stay integer for a long time. However, they eventually fail.
QUESTION: Is there any strictly ...
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3-colorings of the unit distance graph of $\Bbb R^3$
Let $\Gamma$ be the unit distance graph of $\Bbb R^3$: points $(x,y)$ form an edge if $|x,y|=1$.
Let $(A,B,C,D)$ be a unit side rhombus in the plane, with a transcendental diagonal, e.g. $A = (\alpha,...
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Do there exist exotic 4-tori?
More precisely: are there known manifolds which are homeomorphic, but not diffeomorphic to the standard 4-torus? Are there any nice invariants distinguishing such manifolds?
Related: if such a ...
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Computer calculations in $A_\infty$ categories?
Is there a good computer program for doing calculations in $A_\infty$ categories?
Explicit calculations in $A_\infty$ categories are an important, useful, yet very tedious task. One has to keep track ...
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Chern character of a Representation
Let $G$ be a finite group. Under the identification of the representation ring $R_{\mathbb{C}}(G)$ with the equivariant K-theory $KU^0_G(\ast)$ of the point, followed by Atiyah-Segal completion-...
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