Rationals and decimals as required in the school curriculum: Part 1: Rationals as measurement

In the late seventies, Guy Brousseau set himself the goal of verifying experimentally a theory he had been building up for a number of years. The theory, consistent with what was later named (non-radical) constructivism, was that children, in suitable carefully arranged circumstances, can build their own knowledge of mathematics. The experiment, carried out jointly with his wife, Nadine, in her classroom at the École Jules Michelet, was to teach all of the material on rational and decimal numbers required by the national program with a carefully structured, tightly woven and interdependent sequence of “situations.” This article describes and discusses the first portion of that experiment.     

Rationals and decimals as required in the school curriculum: Part 3. Rationals and decimals as linear functions

In the late seventies, Guy Brousseau set himself the goal of verifying experimentally a theory he had been building up for a number of years. The theory, consistent with what was later named (non-radical) constructivism, was that children, in suitable carefully arranged circumstances, can build their own knowledge of mathematics. The experiment, carried out by a team of researchers and teachers that included his wife, Nadine, in classrooms at the École Jules Michelet, was to teach all of the material on rational and decimal numbers required by the national programme with a carefully structured, tightly woven and interdependent sequence of “situations.” This article describes and discusses the third portion of that experiment.     

Rationals and decimals as required in the school curriculum: Part 4: Problem solving,composed mappings and division

In the late seventies, Guy Brousseau set himself the goal of verifying experimentally a theory he had been building up for a number of years. The theory, consistent with what was later named (nonradical) constructivism, was that children, in suitable carefully arranged circumstances, can build their own knowledge of mathematics. The experiment, carried out by a team of researchers and teachers that included his wife, Nadine, in classrooms at the École Jules Michelet, was to teach all of the material on rational and decimal numbers required by the national program with a carefully structured, tightly woven and interdependent sequence of “situations.” This article describes and discusses the fourth and last portion of that experiment.     

Prime and composite numbers as integer parts of powers

We study prime and composite numbers in the sequence of integer parts of powers of a fixed real number. We first prove a result which implies that there is a transcendental number ξ>1 for which the numbers [ξ^{n !}], n =2,3, ..., are all prime. Then, following an idea of Huxley who did it for cubics, we construct Pisot numbers of arbitrary degree such that all integer parts of their powers are composite. Finally, we give an example of an explicit transcendental number ζ (obtained as the limit of a certain recurrent sequence) for which the sequence [ζⁿ], n =1,2,..., has infinitely many elements in an arbitrary integer arithmetical progression. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Nouvelles statistiques de partitions pour les q-nombres de Stirling de seconde espèce

Steingr?́msson (Preprint, 1999) has recently introduced a partition analogue of Foata-Zeilberger's mak statistic for permutations and conjectured that its generating function is equal to the classical q-Stirling numbers of second kind. In this paper, we prove a generalization of Steingr?́msson's Conjecture 12.     

Coincidence of strict s-numbers of weighted Hardy operators

We establish the equality of all the so-called strict s-numbers of the weighted Hardy operator T:Lp(I)→Lp(I), where 1<p<∞, I=(a,b)⊂R and

     

On the complexity of computing Kostka numbers and Littlewood-Richardson coefficients

Kostka numbers and Littlewood-Richardson coefficients appear in combinatorics and representation theory. Interest in their computation stems from the fact that they are present in quantum mechanical computations since Wigner [15]. In recent times, there have been a number of algorithms proposed to perform this task [1–3, 11, 12]. The issue of their computational complexity has received at-tention in the past, and was raised recently by E. Rassart in [11]. We prove that the problem of computing either quantity is #P-complete. Thus, unless P = NP, which is widely disbelieved, there do not exist efficient algorithms that compute these numbers.     

Mathematical modelling in university education. An experiment at the University of Oldenburg

This paper suggests that mathematics teacher educators should listen carefully to what their students are saying. More specifically, it demonstrates how from one pre-teacher's non-traditional geometric representation of a unit fraction, a variety of learning environments that lead to the enrichment of mathematics for teaching can be developed. The paper shows how new knowledge may be generated through an attempt to validate an intuitive idea; in other words, how the quest for rigour may serve as a catalyst for the growth of mathematical concepts in the context of K-16 mathematics.     

BERNOULLI CONVOLUTIONS ASSOCIATED WITH CERTAIN NON——PISOT NUMBERS

The Bernoulli convolution Vλ measure is shown to be absolutely continuous with L^2 density for almost all 1/2＜λ＜1, and singular if λ^-1 is a Pisot number. It is an open question whether the Pisot type Bernoulli conuolutions are the only singular ones. In this paper, we construct a family of non-Pisot type Bernoulli convo-lutions Vλ such that their density functions, if they exist, are not L^2. We also construct other Bernolulli convo-lutions whose density functions if they exist, behave rather badly.     

Monomial conditions on prime rings

The study of pivotal monomials (and related conditions) is continued and extended, with the aim of studying carefully a situation generalizing Martindale's theory of prime rings with generalized polynomial identity. This is used to describe various classes of rings in terms of simple elementary sentences. The focus is on prime “Johnson” rings, which play a crucial role in our characterizations. It turns out that these rings can be characterized in terms of generalized pivotal monomials, thereby yielding a theory similar to that of [17]. An erratum to this article is available at .     

Counting the number of twin Niven numbers

Given an integer q≥2, we say that a positive integer is a q-Niven number if it is divisible by the sum of its digits in base q. Given an arbitrary integer r∈[2,2q], we say that (n,n+1,…,n+r−1) is a q-Niven r -tuple if each number n+i, for i=0,1,…,r−1, is a q-Niven number. We show that there exists a positive constant c=c(q,r) such that the number of q-Niven r-tuples whose leading component is <x is asymptotic to cx/(log x) ^r as x→∞. Research of J.M. De Koninck supported in part by a grant from NSERC. Research of I. Kátai supported by the Applied Number Theory Research Group of the Hungarian Academy of Science and by a grant from OTKA.     

Rado Numbers for the Equation ∑i = 1 xi + c = xm, for Negative Values of c

For every integer m ≥ 3 and every integer c, let r(m, c) be the least integer, if it exists, such that for every 2-coloring of the set {1, 2, …, r(m, c)} there exists a monochromatic solution to the equation The values of r(m, c) were previously known for all values of m and all nonnegative values of c. In this paper, exact values of r(m, c) are found for all values of m and all values of c such that − m + 2 < c < 0 or c < − (m − 1)(m − 2). Upper and lower bounds are given for the remaining values of c.     

Fold completeness of a system of root vectors of a system of unbounded polynomial operator pencils in Banach spaces. I. Abstract theory

N. Dunford and J.T. Schwartz (1963) striking Hilbert space theory about completeness of a system of root vectors (generalized eigenvectors) of an unbounded operator has been generalized by J. Burgoyne (1995) to the Banach spaces framework. We use the Burgoyne's theorem and prove n-fold completeness of a system of root vectors of a system of unbounded polynomial operator pencils in Banach spaces. The theory will allow to consider, in application, boundary value problems for ODEs and elliptic PDEs which polynomially depend on the spectral parameter in both the equation and the boundary conditions.     

Heisenberg characters, unitriangular groups, and Fibonacci numbers

Let Un(Fq) denote the group of unipotent n×n upper triangular matrices over a finite field with q elements. We show that the Heisenberg characters of Un+1(Fq) are indexed by lattice paths from the origin to the line x+y=n using the steps (1,0), (1,1), (0,1), (0,2), which are labeled in a certain way by nonzero elements of Fq. In particular, we prove for n?1 that the number of Heisenberg characters of Un+1(Fq) is a polynomial in q−1 with nonnegative integer coefficients and degree n, whose leading coefficient is the nth Fibonacci number. Similarly, we find that the number of Heisenberg supercharacters of Un(Fq) is a polynomial in q−1 whose coefficients are Delannoy numbers and whose values give a q-analogue for the Pell numbers. By counting the fixed points of the action of a certain group of linear characters, we prove that the numbers of supercharacters, irreducible supercharacters, Heisenberg supercharacters, and Heisenberg characters of the subgroup of Un(Fq) consisting of matrices whose superdiagonal entries sum to zero are likewise all polynomials in q−1 with nonnegative integer coefficients.     

On arithmetic and asymptotic properties of up-down numbers

Let σ=(σ₁,…,σ_N), where σ_i=±1, and let C(σ) denote the number of permutations π of 1,2,…,N+1, whose up-down signature sign(π(i+1)-π(i))=σ_i, for i=1,…,N. We prove that the set of all up-down numbers C(σ) can be expressed by a single universal polynomial Φ, whose coefficients are products of numbers from the Taylor series of the hyperbolic tangent function. We prove that Φ is a modified exponential, and deduce some remarkable congruence properties for the set of all numbers C(σ), for fixed N. We prove a concise upper bound for C(σ), which describes the asymptotic behaviour of the up-down function C(σ) in the limit C(σ)?(N+1)!.     

The odd-number sequence: squares and sums

Direct study of various characteristics of integers and their interactions is readily accessible to undergraduate students. Integers obviously fall in different classes of modular rings and thus have features unique to that class which can result in a variety of formations, particularly with sums of squares. The sum of the first n odd numbers is itself the square of n within the odd number sequence, from which testing for primality within the Fibonacci sequence is investigated in this note.     

On an approximation property of Pisot numbers

Let 1<q<2 be a real number, m≥1 be a rational integer and l_m(q)={|P(q)|,P∈Z[X],P(q)≠0,H(P)≤m}, where Z[X] denotes the set of polynomials P with rational integer coefficients and H(P) is the height of P. The value of l_m(q) was determined for many particular Pisot numbers ([3] and [7]). In this paper we determine the infimum and the supremum of the numbers l_m(q) for any fixed m. We also determine the greatest limit point for the case m=1. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Fibonacci and Lucas congruences and their applications

In this paper we obtain some new identities containing Fibonacci and Lucas numbers. These identities allow us to give some congruences concerning Fibonacci and Lucas numbers such as L _2mn+k ≡ (−1)^(m+1)n L _k (mod L _m ), F _2mn+k ≡ (−1)^(m+1)n F _k (mod L _m ), L _2mn+k ≡ (−1) ^mn L _k (mod F _m ) and F _2mn+k ≡ (−1) ^mn F _k (mod F _m ). By the achieved identities, divisibility properties of Fibonacci and Lucas numbers are given. Then it is proved that there is no Lucas number L _n such that L _n = L ₂ ^k t L _m x ² for m > 1 and k ≥ 1. Moreover it is proved that L _n = L _m L _r is impossible if m and r are positive integers greater than 1. Also, a conjecture concerning with the subject is given.     

NON-ARCHIMEDEAN PROBABILITY: FREQUENCY AND AXIOMATICS THEORIES

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