Wednesday, December 16, 2020

Proofs in Poems -- the Sylow Theorems

     One of my valuable resources during this year 2020 has been the AMS PAGE A DAY CALENDAR by Evelyn Lamb -- published by the American Mathematical Society.
     Today, December 16, Lamb's calendar celebrates a collection of poems by British software engineer Patrick Stevens -- verses that together offer poetic proof of the Sylow theorems about the subgroups of a finite group.
     Here is a link to Stevens' collection of  "Slightly silly Sylow pseudo-sonnets" and these are the opening lines:

        Suppose we have a finite group called G.
        This group has size m times a power of p.
        We choose m to have coprimality:
        the power of p's the biggest we can see.
       . . .

1 comment:

  1. fun! I'm reminded of https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/an-italian-poem-about-solving-the-cubic-equation/#:~:text=1500%2D1557)%20had%20discovered%20a,Cardano%20ended%20up%20publishing%20it.

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