About
I am a member of the Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics at Cambridge University and also a fellow of Trinity College. My main mathematical interests are analysis and combinatorics, with a particular focus on the burgeoning area of arithmetic combinatorics (roughly speaking, the study of a cluster of fascinating and interestingly related problems, some of which are about numbers even if they don’t really count as number theory in the sense in which that term is usually understood). I also have an interest in general questions about mathematics, and how it is discovered and transmitted—hence this blog.
Gowers's Weblog 
September 12, 2007 at 3:50 pm |
[…] Timothy Gowers now has a blog called Gowers’s webblog and will no doubt soon change his default about page… […]
February 20, 2010 at 2:25 pm |
Mr Gowers , I am a undergrad student going to learn subject Functional Analysis , so I want to know a book it can be trusted , please let me know name of the book you have used , or better , send me file ebook to my email written above
thank
March 17, 2010 at 11:13 am |
Hey there,
I hope you are well.
It’s nice to visit your blog. In fact it’s very good one specialy for students to get benefitted through your expertise. I was just thinking if you are doing it so good through wordpress then why don’t you have website of your own with the specific domain name which is dedicated to you only.
Let me know if you are interested I can help you.
Regards,
Fariya
April 13, 2010 at 2:27 am |
Get Schooled is looking for incredible math teachers and students deserving of recognition. We want to send two outstanding examples of achievement in math education to New York City to ring the New York Stock Exchange bell. The deadline to apply or nominate someone is this Wednesday 4/16/2010. Submissions are simple 250 word write ups!!
See the Get Schooled site for full details: http://www.getschooled.com/ring-the-bell-contest
June 26, 2010 at 3:42 pm |
In your blog page:
http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~wtg10/settheory.html
you write that:
“Checking that the Peano axioms are valid means deducing them from the axioms we have chosen for sets.”
This appears to suggest that every putative model of ZF is a model of PA. Surely such an assertion is only logically, but not factually, true!
See Apendix C in:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.5602.
September 9, 2010 at 9:31 pm |
Hello,
I recently compiled a list of the 25 best Math blogs for college
students, and I just wanted to let you know that you made the list! It is published online at
http://www.onlinedegrees.org/25-best-math-blogs-for-college-students/
Thanks so much, and if you think your audience would find useful
information in the list or on the site, please feel free to share the
link. The blog is just starting up, so we always appreciate a link back
as we’re trying to increase readership.
Thanks again, and have a great day!
Maria
April 28, 2011 at 8:21 pm |
Hi
I know this is going to sound dumb of me to ask, but what is the answer to 6/2(1+2)? in my head I though it was 1 and when I did it on a calculator I got one again but someone disagreed & said 9 and then did the same sum on their calculator and got nine.
October 6, 2011 at 7:26 am |
[…] Weblog: Blog of the Month for October 2011. Prof. Timothy Gowers (a.k.a. Tim Gowers) is a field medalist and an eminent mathematician. He is a member of the […]
January 26, 2012 at 8:17 pm |
Does the title of the blog imply that more than one number theorist called Gowers or Gower is involved? The use of the additional s after a genitive apostrophe following a conventional s termination (Wales, Harrods) is much contested by style mavens. I’m against, myself.
January 26, 2012 at 8:54 pm
I never got round to choosing a proper name for this blog, and therefore stuck with the WordPress default, which is “userid’s weblog”. But as it happens, I’m in favour of the additional s.
I don’t understand the point you’re making about more than one Gower/Gowers. In the system I favour there is no ambiguity:
1. Gower’s weblog (one Gower).
2. Gowers’ weblog (two or more Gowers).
3. Gowers’s weblog (one Gowers).
4. Gowerses’ weblog (two or more Gowerses).
So I don’t see any way of reasonably interpreting “Gowers’s weblog” except as the weblog of Gowers.
February 1, 2012 at 1:55 am |
[…] been following this through Gowers’s Weblog, the blog of Cambridge mathematician Timothy Gowers. In a series of posts starting on January 21, […]
April 11, 2012 at 3:24 am |
Hi Mr. Tim Gowers,
Since you like open source, I thought you might like this.
The Open Source LENR Project
http://www.opensourcelenr.com/index.html
Thanks,
Gary Wright
July 9, 2012 at 1:26 pm |
[…] Tim Gowers and Tyler Neylon spearheaded the popular boycott of Elsevier, it may have become a common […]
August 21, 2012 at 10:11 am |
[…] Tim Gowers and Tyler Neylon spearheaded the popular boycott of Elsevier, it may have become a common […]
December 18, 2012 at 11:31 pm |
Suppose you are given the opportunity to re-create the mathematics syllabus of public schools in any country you like from ground up. Let’s assume that all your suggestions will be implemented without error.
What topics will you start with? How will you continue from there?
—
From a practical standpoint, most people can run their daily lives only knowing about standardized measurement, zero, positive integers, fractions and decimals, and the basic arithmetic operations (i.e. PEMDAS), along with some basic knowledge on algebraic manipulation.
To manage their finances (even youngsters have credit card debts these days), people will benefit from learning exponential equations, exponential functions, arithmetic progressions and geometric progressions.
People with no exposure to scientific and empirical methodology tend to give too much weight to individual testimonies, leading to easy manipulation by others. To mitigate this, we teach them the normal distribution and the descriptive statistics that complement it, then, expose them to uneven distributions.
Of course, we cannot even begin to teach the normal distribution if people do not know what probability is. So we need to teach people probability before statistics; we’ll start with equal probability and then progress to unequal probability.
To complement probability and statistics, we need to teach people about qualitative scientific and empirical methods as well. This is not in the arena of mathematics however. We also need to teach people some informal and formal logic to combine knowledge of both quantitative and qualitative methods into a cohesive whole. Again, this should be the subject of a separate course.
…And that seems to be it. 60-70% of the human population can go on living their lives without ever learning about calculus. Even if they did learn calculus, the way its being taught right now almost guarantees that those who do not do calculus at undergraduate and graduate level is likely to find them inapplicable in their daily lives.
Now what about the other 30-40%? I suggest we create optional courses that can be taken by 14-17 year olds specifically covering calculus and the other more “pure” area of mathematics like trigonometry and geometry. I also suggest we create exposure courses where students are not required to score an exam; these courses are purely for students who wish to explore the different areas of mathematics so that they may find what they wish to study for the long-term, or simply for the sake of exploration.
—
Of course, even when the plan is good, it can be spoiled by politics. People might give students the impression that calculus is THE subject to study in maths, causing most people to take it even after it became optional, simply for the sake of a status indicator.
January 3, 2013 at 10:51 am |
Sir Gower’s blog has been mentioned in the list of mathematics blogs here-> http://www.talkora.com/science/List-of-mathematics-blogs_112
November 19, 2013 at 1:55 pm |
I should like to get in touch with you in relation to your comment on my blog post on your famous ancestor.
December 5, 2013 at 1:34 pm |
[…] Weblog: Blog of the Month for October 2011. Prof. Timothy Gowers (a.k.a. Tim Gowers) is a field medalist and an eminent mathematician. He is a member of the […]
January 22, 2016 at 4:39 pm |
Mr. Gower I am a student of graduate course in Mathematics. I want to know Algebraic Geometry. Help me to suggest a standard book through gmail. However I am a Regular visitor of your blog and it is very helpful for me as a mediocre student of this subject.
January 6, 2017 at 11:49 am |
I think you taught me at UCL many years ago… I occasionally go back and do a bit of maths. Will enjoy looking through your blog 🙂
May 23, 2017 at 7:10 am |
Can you help me develop my idea concerning game of Hex as described on https://osf.io/yrv4e/ in the spirito of open science?
December 13, 2018 at 9:54 am |
Sir,
May I have your email id because I want to share you my one of the theory.
January 23, 2020 at 2:32 pm |
Hi, I saw your video on Numberphile. Let me just be concise. Have you looked at random colourings of the integers? Lets say we colour integer i black with probability p_i (and white probability 1-p_i) such that the p_i converge to zero as i to \infty. If we then count the number of (black) arithmetic progressions we can show that they are Poisson distributies (law of rare events). Ofcourse this is under certain constrains. If you are intressted be free to contact me :).
January 15, 2021 at 8:36 am |
On vous entend parler français sur le site du Collège de France. Comment l’avez-vous appris?
February 19, 2021 at 10:24 am |
Does anyone use a supercomputer to prove my following conjecture about the topological game of Hex? “Hex never ends in a tie (preventing the opponent from creating a winning chain means to create one for your own): artificial intelligence discovers the winning strategy on an arbitrary-sized board by dabbing the opponent near where he has just played.”
March 8, 2021 at 11:40 am |
Dear Prof Gower’s,
My name is Philip Lane and I read maths at Robinson (89-92). I was a distinctly average student who found 1A analysis very hard and hence when I started my second year steared clear of topics like analysis III like the plague. It was something that always irked, and yes, I was seduced by the the dark side and became a student of damtp. But why?
Because of covid I have had the opportunity to, at least partially, answer this. I hadn’t read a maths book for many years, bought B. Mendelson and W. Sutherland and with the luxury of time coupled with no examination pressure, started to read. What pleasantly surprised me was I could actually understand the material, but that familiar feeling of uncertainty returned when trying to start the problems. I was back to 1989. But now we have Amazon. I was well aware of Schaum outline books back in the day, but none were on the reading lists and clearly the starred books were the books to buy. I took a punt, one final throw of the dice, and bought S. Lipschutz General Topology. As a book it is ok, but for the average student to see almost trivial questions answered in excruciating detail was a revelation. The clouds had lifted.
Please, for the average Cambridge maths undergraduate, who finds IA pure hard, and gets put off analysis for life, could you produce that missing link between a typical maths book/lecture notes and the example sheets that is the WORKED example sheet. Easy questions, thoroughly worked out at every step (preferably with numbers) given as a handout. It would have made a huge difference to me.
Thank you,
Philip Lane
April 15, 2021 at 3:33 am |
Dear Dr. Gowers,
What theme do you use for your wordpress blog?
December 1, 2023 at 9:08 pm |
You are now subscribed to Gowers’s Weblog as