Mathematics and Life: A Speech

On August 27, 2018, I was invited by the Millennium School, Noida to their investiture ceremony. I have previously taught mathematics to Class 11 students in another campus of the school. At that time, I instituted a "Mathguru Prize" for one or two students who did well in mathematics in Grade 10. (The first winner was my student, Ayush Tripathi, who was in the first graduating batch of the school). Every year I buy some books to be given to the winner, with a copy for the school library. 

Here is a speech I gave at the occasion (with some editing). 

***

I am a mathematician, so I speak here only in terms of mathematics. Today we will be awarding the Mathguru prize to two very bright students. The first thing I wish to tell you is something they know very well.

To get 100% in math, you have to do two things. 

1. Solve all the problems in the book
2. Write the solutions in a way that others can understand it. Even you should be able to understand what you have written if you read the solution after 6 months. 

The second thing I wish to tell you is something which Professor Littlewood said. Littlewood was a famous mathematician, who played a big part in Ramanujan's life. He said that if you are trying to solve a really hard problem, then you may not make much progress in a year or two. But you will certainly make a lot of progress in 10 years or so.

Keep this in mind when choosing problems to solve.  Know that even if the problem is very tough, if you keep at it for years, you will make a lot of progress.

Finally, the third thing I wish to share are some words of George Polya, another famous mathematician. Polya said:

Beauty in mathematics is seeing the truth without effort.

So one must aspire to understand things so well, that we can see the beauty of it without any effort. The same goes when we are presenting something that we have understood. 

I speak in terms of mathematics, but I speak not only of mathematics. Much of what I said is applicable in other domains of life.

Best wishes and good luck to all of you, as you pursue your aspirations.

***

PS. I may have been influenced a bit in the way I phrased certain things by a book I just finished reading for the nth time. The book is called Shibumi, written by Trevanian. 

The determinant of an elliptic, Sylvesteresque matrix

My second determinant project with Christian Krattenthaler.

The determinant of the Sylvester matrix corresponding to the polynomials
\[
x^2+2s_1x+s_1^2 = (x+s_1)^2
\]
and
\[
x^3+3 s_2 x^2 +3s_2^2 x + s_2^3 = (x+s_2)^3
\]
is given by
\[
\det
\begin{pmatrix}
1 & 2s_1 & s_1^2 & 0 & 0\\
0 & 1& 2s_1 & s_1^2 & 0\\
0 & 0 &1 & 2s_1 & s_1^2 \\
1 & 3s_2 &  3s_2^2 & s_2^3 & 0\\
0& 1 & 3s_2 &  3s_2^2 & s_2^3 \\
\end{pmatrix}
= (s_1-s_2)^6.
\]

The determinant is $0$ when $s_1$ and $s_2$ are both $1$. In general, if the determinant of a Sylvester matrix is $0$, then this indicates that the two polynomials have a common root.

Here is an abstract of our paper.

We evaluate the determinant of a matrix whose entries are  elliptic hypergeometric terms and whose form is reminiscent of Sylvester matrices. In particular, it generalizes the determinant evaluation above. A hypergeometric determinant evaluation of a matrix of this type has appeared in the context of approximation theory, in the work of  Feng, Krattenthaler and Xu.  Our determinant evaluation is an elliptic extension of their evaluation, which has two additional parameters (in addition to the base $q$ and nome $p$ found in elliptic hypergeometric terms).  We also extend the evaluation to a formula transforming an elliptic determinant into a multiple of another elliptic determinant. This transformation has two further parameters. The proofs of the determinant evaluation and the transformation formula require an elliptic determinant lemma due to Warnaar, and the application of two $C_n$ elliptic formulas that extend Frenkel and Turaev's $_{10}V_9$ summation formula and $_{12}V_{11}$ transformation formula, results due to Warnaar, Rosengren, Rains, and Coskun and Gustafson.   

This paper has been published in Sigma. Here is a link:
The determinant of an elliptic Sylvesteresque matrix (with Christian Krattenthaler), SIGMA, 14 (2018), 052, 15pp.

I presented this paper in Combinatory Analysis 2018, a conference in honor of George Andrews' 80th birthday conference. Here is a picture from Andrews' talk. (The picture inside the picture is of Freeman J. Dyson.)

Next I expect to present the same paper in a Summer Research Institute on $q$-series in the University of Tianjin, China.

A long version (with lots of background information) was presented in our "Arbeitsgemeinschaft "Diskrete Mathematik" (working group in Discrete Mathematics) Seminar, TU-Wien and Uni Wien, on Tuesday, June 5, 2018. 

How to discover the exponential function

Another article on the "How to discover/guess/prove/..." series written for a high school audience. The basic idea is to find a function whose derivative is itself, and to find the power series which satisfies this. Then messing with it to guess it must be the exponential function. No proofs, in fact, it is outrageously un-rigourous.  I hope the editor allows it.

I try to include only the most beautiful items, and state facts which I feel every high school student should know, even if they doesn't appear formally in the syllabus. 

Update (Nov 2017). The article was published in the November issue of At Right Angles. A nice surprise was Shailesh Shirali's companion article which gives some graphical intuition to complement the algebraic computations in my article. Here is the link to a reprint. 

Abstract

If a function is such that its derivative is the function itself, then what would it be? Some interesting mathematical objects  appear while trying to answer this question, including a power series, the irrational number $e$ and the exponential function $e^x$. The article ends with a beautiful formula that  connects $e$, $\pi$, the complex number $i=\sqrt{-1}$, $1$ and $0$.

Update: 15/June/2017. I was wondering what happened to this article, and the editor said he had sent some comments from the referee which were yet to be incorporated. I resent the article after incorporating the referee's comments, and now this article is slated to appear in the November issue of At Right Angles. Time to think about the next article in the series.

Here is a link to the updated preprint. Please do give comments.

WP Bailey Lemmas (Elliptic, multivariable)

After many many years, Michael Schlosser and I wrote another joint paper. We first collaborated in 1995-96 when both of us were Ph.D. students or shortly thereafter. Our joint work was part of his thesis, and published in Constructive Approximation. This time around, I was his post-doc in Vienna from Feb 1, 2016 to Feb 28, 2017.

The picture was taken in Strobl, a favorite place for small meetings and conferences for Krattenthaler's group in the University of Vienna.

In this paper, we give multivariable extensions (over root systems) of the elliptic well-poised (WP) Bailey Transform and Lemma. In the classical (i.e. dimension = 1) case, this work was done by Spiridonov, who in turn extended the work of Andrews and Bailey. It is Andrews' exposition which we found very useful while finding generalizations. We used  previous $q$-Dougall summations due to Rosengren, and Rosengren and Schlosser, and found a few of our own along with some new elliptic Bailey $_{10}\phi_9$ transformation formulas, extending some fundamental formulas given in the classical case by Frenkel and Turaev in 1997. Along the way, we discovered a nice trick to generalize the theorem of my advisor, Steve Milne, that  I had named "Fundamental Theorem of $U(n)$ series" in my thesis.

Hopefully, there will be many more collaborative ventures in the near future.

Update (Mar 22, 2018): The paper has been published. Here is the reference and Link:
G. Bhatnagar and  M.J. Schlosser, Elliptic well-poised Bailey transforms and lemmas on root systems, SIGMA, 14 (2018), 025, 44pp.