4 ms·
This caught my attention: """ Then they asked how Dirichlet got an explicit formula for this when \chi was a real character. I was going to write a messy (but
by dpflan 7y ago
This caught my attention:
"""
Then they asked how Dirichlet got an explicit formula for this when \chi
was a real character. I was going to write a messy (but finite) expression
involving sines and logs, but then I realized that they were talking about
the class number formula. (I said carelessly though that "this was a
disgusting way to do it", since I was still thinking about the sine-log
formulas. Then they made a comment that "This would put thousands of
people out of work", or something like that.)
"""
Can someone explain the comment made by the examiners?
> "This would put thousands of people out of work".
Thanks!
- robinhouston 7y agoI read this as a joking reference to the fact that class field theory is an important area of contemporary mathematics, which presumably employs many people (though perhaps not literally thousands). I’d be curious to know if anyone reads it differently.