Questions tagged [number-theory]
A field of mathematics studying numbers, their properties and structures that arise from them.
17
questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
20
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528 views
What is the modern significance of Theaetetus's classification of quadratic irrationals?
Before Eudoxus's theory of proportion there was a theory of irrationals based on continued fraction expansions, which Fowler calls anthyphairesis. Theaetetus is said to develop a classification of ...
6
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0answers
114 views
Did Hardy and Ramanujan miscalculate these values?
When I read Dickson's History Of The Theory Of Numbers Vol-2, I found that there seems to be a mistake in the approximation of partition numbers p(200). For this reason, I found the original text ...
5
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0answers
265 views
What is Hensel's lemma a lemma for?
Was Hensel's lemma originally used for proving some other theorem? Or is it meant to be a standalone result? Why is it a "lemma" and not a theorem?
3
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0answers
287 views
Are there primitive Pythagoras triplets (in integers), being with all the terms as powerful numbers?
I'm searching a trusted historical sources about primitive Pythagoras triplets as being powerful integers (numerical examples), or a notable work of impossibility of such a triples, but couldn't find ...
2
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0answers
82 views
Where is First-Order Peano Arithmetic first clearly formulated?
I really should know this, but ...
When/where/by whom was first-order Peano Arithmetic first clearly and explicitly formulated in a recognizably modern form (perhaps exact notation apart) -- with the ...
2
votes
0answers
81 views
Notation $n=efr$ in algebraic number theory
When $\Bbb Q \subset K$ is a field extension of finite degree and when $p \in \Bbb Z$ is a prime number, the ideal $p O_K$ decomposes uniquely as a product $\prod_{i=1}^r P_i^{e_i}$ of prime ideals of ...
2
votes
0answers
86 views
Which is the first reference using the terminology “Chinese Remainder Theorem” for this theorem?
The Chinese Remainder Theorem is one of the fundamental theorems in modular arithmetic. As far as I know, this terminology for the theorem is due to the fact that the Chinese mathematicians were the ...
1
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0answers
91 views
Why didn't the ancient Greeks consider 1 to be odd?
The Wikipedia page on parity currently says:
The ancient Greeks considered 1, the monad, to be neither fully odd nor fully even
Why didn't they consider 1 as odd? (I am assuming they already had the ...
1
vote
0answers
29 views
Timeline for the earliest work on Frobenius problems
If $a, b$ are positive and coprime integers, then the set of linear combinations of $a$ and $b$ with nonnegative coefficients is all integers past $(a - 1)(b - 1)$; i.e. $\{ \lambda_1 a + \lambda_2 b :...
1
vote
0answers
75 views
History of Reciprocity Laws
Does anybody know a freely available overview of the history of Reciprocity Laws, especially the Cubic and Biquadratic ones? Wikipedia
I know about Franz Lemmermeyer's book "Reciprocity Laws", but ...
0
votes
0answers
97 views
Does this mathematical result have a specific name?
I am not sure if it's new although it may be an easy consequence of some theorem or lemma.The result is as follows:
By choosing a set of numbers between $0$ and $n$(for any $n$) picking each number at ...
0
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0answers
44 views
What existing theorems were utilized to develop the Prospect Theory formulated by Kahneman and Tversky?
According to this article, the the Prospect Theory is used in finance. As the article states:
Prospect theory’s central formula lays out how we go with our gut when determining the value (V) of a ...
0
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0answers
48 views
Is there an English translation of Kronecker's proof of Infinitude of primes?
Is any English translation of the following paper available?
H. Hasse, Vorlesungen ¨uber Zahlentheorie, Second edition, Springer-Verlag, New York, $1964$ (L. Kronecker, $269–273; 440–442; $ K. Hensel, ...
0
votes
0answers
126 views
Why isn't François Proth's name used for Gilbreath's conjecture as he discovered & published a proof 80 years earlier?
According to Wikipedia's Gilbreath's conjecture page,
The statement is named after mathematician Norman L. Gilbreath who, in 1958, presented it to the mathematical community after observing the ...
0
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0answers
71 views
How did Hardy and Littlewood formulate the k-tuple conjecture?
Let $\mathcal{H}_k = (h_1,h_2,\cdots,h_k)$ be an admissible k-tuple.
The k-tuple conjecture predicts that the number of primes $(b+h_1,b+h_2,\cdots,b+h_k)\in \mathbb{P}^k$ with $b+h_k \leq x$ is:
$$\...
0
votes
0answers
82 views
Was 360 considered a magic number, possibly?
The number $360$ as the number of units into which the circle is divided has some nice properties:
it has as many divisors as a number of its size can have
it's nearly the number of days per year
...
0
votes
1answer
84 views
How were number symbols derived/shaped up?
This question was sitting on my to do list for sometime.
So, as I was reading a book on history of science, I came across of a paragraph where the author attempted to give a historical development ...
