The theme of last month’s blog was a review of disappointments: a list of six mistakes made by the leadership of mathematics, plus reflections on their consequences, and a suggestion for remedying the demoralising effect of Ulam’s Dilemma.  These historic ill-judged decisions of the leadership resulted in maths losing big […]

Let’s take stock of some unfortunate glitches which have occurred in the record of Maths and which have been chewed over with some reluctance in this series.  Having surveyed the seriousness of the glitches, the next stage is to consider what can be done to put the record straight.  Maths […]

In instalment 3 we looked at a serious social and educational crisis undermining the meaning of ‘truth’, and its inevitably deeply damaging effect on mathematics —which seeks, as it were, to copperbottom truth by raising it to the status of rigorous proof.  In instalment 4 we looked at a glaring, […]

In this instalment we look at the most howling mistake ever made in maths. But it went unnoticed.  It was then, unaccountably, accepted into the official body of mathematical thinking. This is a howler which has generated untold consequences. It was a very simple mistake,  but subsequent scholars evidently took […]