The Unity of Combinatorics

I just finished my very first book review for the Notices of the AMS. The authors are Ezra Brown and Richard Guy, and the book title is the same as the blog post. I had mixed feelings when I accepted the assignment to write this. I knew this would take a lot of work (I was wrong — it took a huge amount of work). But the reason I accepted is because I strongly suspected that there is no “unity of combinatorics”, so I wanted to be proved wrong. Here is how the book begins:

One reason why Combinatorics has been slow to become accepted as part of mainstream Mathematics is the common belief that it consists of a bag of isolated tricks, a number of areas: [very long list – IP] with little or no connection between them. We shall see that they have numerous threads weaving them together into a beautifully patterned tapestry.

Having read the book, I continue to maintain that there is no unity. The book review became a balancing act — how do you write a somewhat positive review if you don’t believe into the mission of the book? Here is the first paragraph of the portion of the review where I touch upon themes very familiar to readers of this blog:

As I see it, the whole idea of combinatorics as a “slow to become accepted” field feels like a throwback to the long forgotten era. This attitude was unfair but reasonably common back in 1970, outright insulting and relatively uncommon in 1995, and was utterly preposterous in 2020.

After a lengthy explanation I conclude:

To finish this line of thought, it gives me no pleasure to conclude that the case for the unity of combinatorics is too weak to be taken seriously. Perhaps, the unity of mathematics as a whole is an easier claim to establish, as evident from [Stanley’s] quotes. On the other hand, this lack of unity is not necessarily a bad thing, as we would be amiss without the rich diversity of cultures, languages, open problems, tools and applications of different areas.

Enjoy the full review! And please comment on the post with your own views on this alleged “unity”.

P.S. A large part of the book is freely downloadable. I made this website for the curious reader.

Remark (ADDED April 17, 2021)
Ezra “Bud” Brown gave a talk on the book illustrating many of the connections I discuss in the review. This was at a memorial conference celebrating Richard Guy’s legacy. I was not aware of the video until now. Watch the whole talk.

How to tell a good mathematical story

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I was asked to contribute to  to the Early Career Collection in the Notices of the AMS. The paper is not up on their website yet, but I already submitted the proofs. So if you can’t wait — the short article is available here. I admit that it takes a bit of a chutzpah to teach people how to write, so take it as you will.

Like my previous “how to write” article (see also my blog post), this article is mildly opinionated, but hopefully not overly so to remain useful. It is again aimed at a novice writer. There is a major difference between the way fiction is written vs. math, and I am trying to capture it somehow. To give you some flavor, here is a quote:

What kind of a story? Imagine a non-technical and non-detailed version of the abstract of your paper. It should be short, to the point, and straightforward enough to be a tweet, yet interesting enough for one person to want to tell it, and for the listener curious enough to be asking for details. Sounds difficult if not impossible? You are probably thinking that way, because distilled products always lack flavor compared to the real thing. I hear you, but let me give you some examples.

Take Aesop’s fable “The Tortoise and the Hare” written over 2500 years ago. The story would be “A creature born with a gift procrastinated one day, and was overtaken by a very diligent creature born with a severe handicap.” The names of these animals and the manner in which one lost to another are less relevant to the point, so the story is very dry. But there are enough hints to make some readers curious to look up the full story.

Now take “The Terminator”, the original 1984 movie. The story here is (spoiler alert! ) “A man and a machine come from another world to fight in this world over the future of the other world; the man kills the machine but dies at the end.” If you are like me, you probably have many questions about the details, which are in many ways much more exciting than the dry story above. But you see my point – this story is a bit like an extended tag line, yet interesting enough to be discussed even if you know the ending.