Monthly Archives: March 2013

Permanent-determinant method

Posted on March 9, 2013 by apgoucher

The determinant of a matrix can be regarded, most naturally, as the volume scaling factor of the corresponding linear map. However, one of the formulae for finding the determinant of a square matrix is to compute , where we sum over … Continue reading →

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Eilenberg-Mazur swindle

Posted on March 6, 2013 by apgoucher

The connect sum of two knots is obtained by joining them together in the obvious way. There is, however, one small detail. If you define this naïvely, then you won’t necessarily obtain an unambiguous connect sum. For instance, consider the … Continue reading →

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Cipher 19: Corrupted

Posted on March 5, 2013 by apgoucher

You were given a coded message. Unfortunately, the bottom of the page became slightly damp, rendering several of the characters illegible (these are represented by asterisks in the text below). Your challenge is to recover the password in spite of … Continue reading →

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Assorted news

Posted on March 3, 2013 by apgoucher

Some things have actually happened. A few of these are worth mentioning. RMM 2013 results Firstly, the results of the Romanian Master of Mathematics (RMM 2013) competition have been published. There have been two perfect scores this year (very rare … Continue reading →

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