Exceptions and counterexamples: Understanding Abel's comment on Cauchy's Theorem

It may seem odd that Abel, a protagonist of Cauchy's new rigor, spoke of “exceptions” when he criticized Cauchy's theorem on the continuity of sums of continuous functions. However, when interpreted contextually, exceptions appear as both valid and viable entities in the early 19th century. First, Abel's use of the term “exception” and the role of the exception in his binomial paper is documented and analyzed. Second, it is suggested how Abel may have acquainted himself with the exception and his use of it in a process denoted critical revision is discussed. Finally, an interpretation of Abel's exception is given that identifies it as a representative example of a more general transition in the understanding of mathematical objects that took place during the period. With this interpretation, exceptions find their place in a fundamental transition during the early 19th century from a formal approach to analysis toward a more conceptual one.     

More non-semigroup Lie gradings

This note is devoted to the construction of two very easy examples, of respective dimensions 4 and 6, of graded Lie algebras whose grading is not given by a semigroup, the latter one being a semisimple algebra. It is shown that 4 is the minimal possible dimension for such graded Lie algebras.     

Prospective elementary teachers’ claiming in responses to false generalizations

When faced with a false generalization and a counterexample, what types of claims do prospective K-8 teachers make, and what factors influence the type and prudence of their claims relative to the data, observations, and arguments reported? This article addresses that question. Responses to refutation tasks and cognitive interviews were used to explore claiming. It was found that prospective K-8 teachers’ claiming can be influenced by knowledge of argumentation; knowledge and use of the mathematical practice of exception barring; perceptions of the task; use of natural language; knowledge of, use of, and skill with the mathematics register; and abilities to technically handle data or conceptual insights. A distinction between technical handlings for developing claims and technical handlings for supporting claims was made. It was found that prudent claims can arise from arguer-developed representations that afford conceptual insights, even when searching for support for a different claim.     

关于集合的粗相似度量的注记

举例说明文献"集合的粗相似度量"中定理3.1(2)的结论是不严谨的,从而给出一个严谨的结论。     

Excluding a Simple Good Pair Approach to Directed Cuts

In 1972, Mader proved that every undirected graph has a good pair, that is, an ordered pair (u,v) of nodes such that the star of v is a minimum cut separating u and v. In 1992, Nagamochi and Ibaraki gave a simple procedure to find a good pair as the basis of an elegant and very efficient algorithm to find minimum cuts in graphs. This paper rules out the simple good pair approach for the problem of finding a minimum directed cut in a digraph and for the more general problem of minimizing submodular functions. In fact, we construct a digraph with no good pair. Note that if a graph has no good pair, then it may not possess a so-called cut-equivalent tree. Benczúr constructed a digraph with no cut-equivalent tree; our counterexample thus extends Benczúr's one. Received: March 12, 1999 Final version received: June 19, 2000     

A Characterization of Counterexamples to the Kodaira-Ramanujam Vanishing Theorem on Surfaces in Positive Characteristic

The author gives a characterization of counterexamples to the Kodaira-Ramanujam vanishing theorem on smooth projective surfaces in positive characteristic. More precisely, it is reproved that if there is a counterexample to the Kodaira-Ramanujam vanishing theorem on a smooth projective surface X in positive characteristic, then X is either a quasi-elliptic surface of Kodaira dimension 1 or a surface of general type. Furthermore, it is proved that up to blow-ups, X admits a fibration to a smooth projective curve, such that each fiber is a singular curve.     

Undergraduate mathematics majors’ writing performance producing proofs and counterexamples about continuous functions

In advanced mathematical thinking, proving and refuting are crucial abilities to demonstrate whether and why a proposition is true or false. Learning proofs and counterexamples within the domain of continuous functions is important because students encounter continuous functions in many mathematics courses. Recently, a growing number of studies have provided evidence that students have difficulty with mathematical proofs. Few of these research studies, however, have focused on undergraduates’ abilities to produce proofs and counterexamples in the domain of continuous functions. The goal of this study is to contribute to research on student productions of proofs and counterexamples and to identify their abilities and mathematical understandings. The findings suggest more attention should be paid to teaching and learning proofs and counterexamples, as participants showed difficulty in writing these statements. More importantly, the analysis provides insight into the design of curriculum and instruction that may improve undergraduates’ learning in advanced mathematics courses.     

A Class Of Counterexamples Concerning an Open Problem

Kenneth R. Davidson raised ten open problems in the book Nest Algebras. One of theseopen problems isProblem 7 If K（交集）AlgL is weak^* dense in AlgL, where K is the set of all compact operators in B(H）,is L completely distributive? In this note, we prove that there is a reflexive subspace lattice L on some Hilbert space, which satisfies the following conditions: (a)F(AlgL) is dense in AlgL in the ultrastrong operator topology, where F(AlgL) is the set of all finite rank operators in AlgL; (b) L isn‘t a completely distributive lattice. The subspace lattices that satisfy the above conditions form a large class of lattices. As a special case of the result, it easy to see that the answer to Problem 7 is negative.     

A Note on Mascarenhas' Counterexample about Global Convergence of the Affine Scaling Algorithm

Mascarenhas gave an instance of linear programming problems to show that the long-step affine scaling algorithm can fail to converge to an optimal solution with the step-size λ=0.999 . In this note, we give a simple and clear geometrical explanation for this phenomenon in terms of the Newton barrier flow induced by projecting the homogeneous affine scaling vector field conically onto a hyperplane where the objective function is constant. Based on this interpretation, we show that the algorithm can fail for "any" λ greater than about 0.91 (a more precise value is 0.91071), which is considerably shorter than λ = 0.95 and 0.99 recommended for efficient implementations. Accepted 17 February 1998