How to be good at coming up with counter example in TopologyHow to attack “if true, prove it; if not true,...
How to not starve gigantic beasts
Israeli soda type drink
Magical attacks and overcoming damage resistance
What is the best way to deal with NPC-NPC combat?
Find a stone which is not the lightest one
What does "function" actually mean in music?
Could moose/elk survive in the Amazon forest?
As an international instructor, should I openly talk about my accent?
What is the term for a person whose job is to place products on shelves in stores?
Negative Resistance
Was Dennis Ritchie being too modest in this quote about C and Pascal?
How much of a wave function must reside inside event horizon for it to be consumed by the black hole?
A strange hotel
How exactly does Hawking radiation decrease the mass of black holes?
Multiple options vs single option UI
Co-worker works way more than he should
Extracting Dirichlet series coefficients
Restricting the options of a lookup field, based on the value of another lookup field?
Unknown code in script
What to do with someone that cheated their way through university and a PhD program?
Contradiction proof for inequality of P and NP?
std::unique_ptr of base class holding reference of derived class does not show warning in gcc compiler while naked pointer shows it. Why?
"Whatever a Russian does, they end up making the Kalashnikov gun"? Are there any similar proverbs in English?
Work requires me to come in early to start computer but wont let me clock in to get paid for it
How to be good at coming up with counter example in Topology
How to attack “if true, prove it; if not true, give a counterexample” question?Counter-example of an affirmationIs there a counter example?Sets and Logic .. Disproving with counter exampleProof by counter-examplePreserving compactness and connectedness implies continuity for functions between locally connected, locally compact spaces?Limit point Compactness does not imply compactness counter-exampleHow does the “arc tangent metric” $d(x,y) = | arctan(x) - arctan(y)| $ work?A List of Standard or “Cliche” Homeomorphismsproduct σ-algebra counter exampleCounter example
$begingroup$
This is a more generalized question, but does anyone have a set of tips or tricks to come up with distinctive examples and counterexamples in Topology and Analysis? More specific, how can people often come up with exotic sequence or mappings between spaces? I can understand the intuition behind some of the simple fractions in the by playing with simple fractions like $frac{1}{n}$, but it seems bizarre to me at this moment how people just come up with maps involving complex numbers, trigonometry between exotic spaces out of nowhere
general-topology examples-counterexamples intuition
New contributor
$endgroup$
add a comment |
$begingroup$
This is a more generalized question, but does anyone have a set of tips or tricks to come up with distinctive examples and counterexamples in Topology and Analysis? More specific, how can people often come up with exotic sequence or mappings between spaces? I can understand the intuition behind some of the simple fractions in the by playing with simple fractions like $frac{1}{n}$, but it seems bizarre to me at this moment how people just come up with maps involving complex numbers, trigonometry between exotic spaces out of nowhere
general-topology examples-counterexamples intuition
New contributor
$endgroup$
$begingroup$
This article addresses the general questions that surround yours: On teaching mathematics
$endgroup$
– avs
5 hours ago
$begingroup$
Another general question: How to attack “if true, prove it; if not true, give a counterexample” question?
$endgroup$
– YuiTo Cheng
40 mins ago
add a comment |
$begingroup$
This is a more generalized question, but does anyone have a set of tips or tricks to come up with distinctive examples and counterexamples in Topology and Analysis? More specific, how can people often come up with exotic sequence or mappings between spaces? I can understand the intuition behind some of the simple fractions in the by playing with simple fractions like $frac{1}{n}$, but it seems bizarre to me at this moment how people just come up with maps involving complex numbers, trigonometry between exotic spaces out of nowhere
general-topology examples-counterexamples intuition
New contributor
$endgroup$
This is a more generalized question, but does anyone have a set of tips or tricks to come up with distinctive examples and counterexamples in Topology and Analysis? More specific, how can people often come up with exotic sequence or mappings between spaces? I can understand the intuition behind some of the simple fractions in the by playing with simple fractions like $frac{1}{n}$, but it seems bizarre to me at this moment how people just come up with maps involving complex numbers, trigonometry between exotic spaces out of nowhere
general-topology examples-counterexamples intuition
general-topology examples-counterexamples intuition
New contributor
New contributor
New contributor
asked 6 hours ago
Joe MartinJoe Martin
235
235
New contributor
New contributor
$begingroup$
This article addresses the general questions that surround yours: On teaching mathematics
$endgroup$
– avs
5 hours ago
$begingroup$
Another general question: How to attack “if true, prove it; if not true, give a counterexample” question?
$endgroup$
– YuiTo Cheng
40 mins ago
add a comment |
$begingroup$
This article addresses the general questions that surround yours: On teaching mathematics
$endgroup$
– avs
5 hours ago
$begingroup$
Another general question: How to attack “if true, prove it; if not true, give a counterexample” question?
$endgroup$
– YuiTo Cheng
40 mins ago
$begingroup$
This article addresses the general questions that surround yours: On teaching mathematics
$endgroup$
– avs
5 hours ago
$begingroup$
This article addresses the general questions that surround yours: On teaching mathematics
$endgroup$
– avs
5 hours ago
$begingroup$
Another general question: How to attack “if true, prove it; if not true, give a counterexample” question?
$endgroup$
– YuiTo Cheng
40 mins ago
$begingroup$
Another general question: How to attack “if true, prove it; if not true, give a counterexample” question?
$endgroup$
– YuiTo Cheng
40 mins ago
add a comment |
2 Answers
2
active
oldest
votes
$begingroup$
For counterexamples, just think: "mission sabotage". In other words, deliberately try to break a given statement.
There are generally no "tips", "tricks", "recipes", or anything else of a universal caliber. (When there are, they are so valued that you will surely run across them.) Mathematics is an art as much as it is a science: one tries, examines for errors, and corrects if needed, as many times as it takes.
The best there is in the direction you are asking is learning a sufficiently rich arsenal of counterexamples. To help with that, Olmsted and Gelbaum have written Counterexamples in Analysis, which is a great and highly beneficial read.
$endgroup$
1
$begingroup$
There is similarly a book titled Counterexamples in Topology. Also, it might help to think about what properties you are implicitly assuming when you try to come up with examples. E.g., Am I only looking at continuous functions? Differentiable functions? Increasing functions? Compact spaces? Subsets of $mathbb{R}^n$? Metric spaces? Hausdorff spaces?
$endgroup$
– kccu
6 hours ago
$begingroup$
Thank you very much for the comment. This seems like an excellent book for me to start with. It is just I started taking my first algebraic topology course this semester, but I feel dull as every time I think about some possible theorem to prove, the stack-exchange community would just come up with bizarre (at least to me) counter-example in a short period that would take forever for me to verify.
$endgroup$
– Joe Martin
5 hours ago
add a comment |
$begingroup$
I think that it would indeed be odd for people to come up with exotic counterexamples to innocuous conjectures out of nowhere, as you say. Really, what is guiding those counterexamples is a lot of time and experience spent with problems and the material. When you are reading the statement of a theorem, try seeing what happens when you omit a hypothesis to see what may go wrong, and talk to people about it, either here online or in person to share your thoughts. The more you learn, the more connections you will make, and eventually you will begin to see more as you synthesize that knowledge.
$endgroup$
add a comment |
Your Answer
StackExchange.ready(function() {
var channelOptions = {
tags: "".split(" "),
id: "69"
};
initTagRenderer("".split(" "), "".split(" "), channelOptions);
StackExchange.using("externalEditor", function() {
// Have to fire editor after snippets, if snippets enabled
if (StackExchange.settings.snippets.snippetsEnabled) {
StackExchange.using("snippets", function() {
createEditor();
});
}
else {
createEditor();
}
});
function createEditor() {
StackExchange.prepareEditor({
heartbeatType: 'answer',
autoActivateHeartbeat: false,
convertImagesToLinks: true,
noModals: true,
showLowRepImageUploadWarning: true,
reputationToPostImages: 10,
bindNavPrevention: true,
postfix: "",
imageUploader: {
brandingHtml: "Powered by u003ca class="icon-imgur-white" href="https://imgur.com/"u003eu003c/au003e",
contentPolicyHtml: "User contributions licensed under u003ca href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"u003ecc by-sa 3.0 with attribution requiredu003c/au003e u003ca href="https://stackoverflow.com/legal/content-policy"u003e(content policy)u003c/au003e",
allowUrls: true
},
noCode: true, onDemand: true,
discardSelector: ".discard-answer"
,immediatelyShowMarkdownHelp:true
});
}
});
Joe Martin is a new contributor. Be nice, and check out our Code of Conduct.
Sign up or log in
StackExchange.ready(function () {
StackExchange.helpers.onClickDraftSave('#login-link');
});
Sign up using Google
Sign up using Facebook
Sign up using Email and Password
Post as a guest
Required, but never shown
StackExchange.ready(
function () {
StackExchange.openid.initPostLogin('.new-post-login', 'https%3a%2f%2fmath.stackexchange.com%2fquestions%2f3202542%2fhow-to-be-good-at-coming-up-with-counter-example-in-topology%23new-answer', 'question_page');
}
);
Post as a guest
Required, but never shown
2 Answers
2
active
oldest
votes
2 Answers
2
active
oldest
votes
active
oldest
votes
active
oldest
votes
$begingroup$
For counterexamples, just think: "mission sabotage". In other words, deliberately try to break a given statement.
There are generally no "tips", "tricks", "recipes", or anything else of a universal caliber. (When there are, they are so valued that you will surely run across them.) Mathematics is an art as much as it is a science: one tries, examines for errors, and corrects if needed, as many times as it takes.
The best there is in the direction you are asking is learning a sufficiently rich arsenal of counterexamples. To help with that, Olmsted and Gelbaum have written Counterexamples in Analysis, which is a great and highly beneficial read.
$endgroup$
1
$begingroup$
There is similarly a book titled Counterexamples in Topology. Also, it might help to think about what properties you are implicitly assuming when you try to come up with examples. E.g., Am I only looking at continuous functions? Differentiable functions? Increasing functions? Compact spaces? Subsets of $mathbb{R}^n$? Metric spaces? Hausdorff spaces?
$endgroup$
– kccu
6 hours ago
$begingroup$
Thank you very much for the comment. This seems like an excellent book for me to start with. It is just I started taking my first algebraic topology course this semester, but I feel dull as every time I think about some possible theorem to prove, the stack-exchange community would just come up with bizarre (at least to me) counter-example in a short period that would take forever for me to verify.
$endgroup$
– Joe Martin
5 hours ago
add a comment |
$begingroup$
For counterexamples, just think: "mission sabotage". In other words, deliberately try to break a given statement.
There are generally no "tips", "tricks", "recipes", or anything else of a universal caliber. (When there are, they are so valued that you will surely run across them.) Mathematics is an art as much as it is a science: one tries, examines for errors, and corrects if needed, as many times as it takes.
The best there is in the direction you are asking is learning a sufficiently rich arsenal of counterexamples. To help with that, Olmsted and Gelbaum have written Counterexamples in Analysis, which is a great and highly beneficial read.
$endgroup$
1
$begingroup$
There is similarly a book titled Counterexamples in Topology. Also, it might help to think about what properties you are implicitly assuming when you try to come up with examples. E.g., Am I only looking at continuous functions? Differentiable functions? Increasing functions? Compact spaces? Subsets of $mathbb{R}^n$? Metric spaces? Hausdorff spaces?
$endgroup$
– kccu
6 hours ago
$begingroup$
Thank you very much for the comment. This seems like an excellent book for me to start with. It is just I started taking my first algebraic topology course this semester, but I feel dull as every time I think about some possible theorem to prove, the stack-exchange community would just come up with bizarre (at least to me) counter-example in a short period that would take forever for me to verify.
$endgroup$
– Joe Martin
5 hours ago
add a comment |
$begingroup$
For counterexamples, just think: "mission sabotage". In other words, deliberately try to break a given statement.
There are generally no "tips", "tricks", "recipes", or anything else of a universal caliber. (When there are, they are so valued that you will surely run across them.) Mathematics is an art as much as it is a science: one tries, examines for errors, and corrects if needed, as many times as it takes.
The best there is in the direction you are asking is learning a sufficiently rich arsenal of counterexamples. To help with that, Olmsted and Gelbaum have written Counterexamples in Analysis, which is a great and highly beneficial read.
$endgroup$
For counterexamples, just think: "mission sabotage". In other words, deliberately try to break a given statement.
There are generally no "tips", "tricks", "recipes", or anything else of a universal caliber. (When there are, they are so valued that you will surely run across them.) Mathematics is an art as much as it is a science: one tries, examines for errors, and corrects if needed, as many times as it takes.
The best there is in the direction you are asking is learning a sufficiently rich arsenal of counterexamples. To help with that, Olmsted and Gelbaum have written Counterexamples in Analysis, which is a great and highly beneficial read.
answered 6 hours ago
avsavs
4,4151515
4,4151515
1
$begingroup$
There is similarly a book titled Counterexamples in Topology. Also, it might help to think about what properties you are implicitly assuming when you try to come up with examples. E.g., Am I only looking at continuous functions? Differentiable functions? Increasing functions? Compact spaces? Subsets of $mathbb{R}^n$? Metric spaces? Hausdorff spaces?
$endgroup$
– kccu
6 hours ago
$begingroup$
Thank you very much for the comment. This seems like an excellent book for me to start with. It is just I started taking my first algebraic topology course this semester, but I feel dull as every time I think about some possible theorem to prove, the stack-exchange community would just come up with bizarre (at least to me) counter-example in a short period that would take forever for me to verify.
$endgroup$
– Joe Martin
5 hours ago
add a comment |
1
$begingroup$
There is similarly a book titled Counterexamples in Topology. Also, it might help to think about what properties you are implicitly assuming when you try to come up with examples. E.g., Am I only looking at continuous functions? Differentiable functions? Increasing functions? Compact spaces? Subsets of $mathbb{R}^n$? Metric spaces? Hausdorff spaces?
$endgroup$
– kccu
6 hours ago
$begingroup$
Thank you very much for the comment. This seems like an excellent book for me to start with. It is just I started taking my first algebraic topology course this semester, but I feel dull as every time I think about some possible theorem to prove, the stack-exchange community would just come up with bizarre (at least to me) counter-example in a short period that would take forever for me to verify.
$endgroup$
– Joe Martin
5 hours ago
1
1
$begingroup$
There is similarly a book titled Counterexamples in Topology. Also, it might help to think about what properties you are implicitly assuming when you try to come up with examples. E.g., Am I only looking at continuous functions? Differentiable functions? Increasing functions? Compact spaces? Subsets of $mathbb{R}^n$? Metric spaces? Hausdorff spaces?
$endgroup$
– kccu
6 hours ago
$begingroup$
There is similarly a book titled Counterexamples in Topology. Also, it might help to think about what properties you are implicitly assuming when you try to come up with examples. E.g., Am I only looking at continuous functions? Differentiable functions? Increasing functions? Compact spaces? Subsets of $mathbb{R}^n$? Metric spaces? Hausdorff spaces?
$endgroup$
– kccu
6 hours ago
$begingroup$
Thank you very much for the comment. This seems like an excellent book for me to start with. It is just I started taking my first algebraic topology course this semester, but I feel dull as every time I think about some possible theorem to prove, the stack-exchange community would just come up with bizarre (at least to me) counter-example in a short period that would take forever for me to verify.
$endgroup$
– Joe Martin
5 hours ago
$begingroup$
Thank you very much for the comment. This seems like an excellent book for me to start with. It is just I started taking my first algebraic topology course this semester, but I feel dull as every time I think about some possible theorem to prove, the stack-exchange community would just come up with bizarre (at least to me) counter-example in a short period that would take forever for me to verify.
$endgroup$
– Joe Martin
5 hours ago
add a comment |
$begingroup$
I think that it would indeed be odd for people to come up with exotic counterexamples to innocuous conjectures out of nowhere, as you say. Really, what is guiding those counterexamples is a lot of time and experience spent with problems and the material. When you are reading the statement of a theorem, try seeing what happens when you omit a hypothesis to see what may go wrong, and talk to people about it, either here online or in person to share your thoughts. The more you learn, the more connections you will make, and eventually you will begin to see more as you synthesize that knowledge.
$endgroup$
add a comment |
$begingroup$
I think that it would indeed be odd for people to come up with exotic counterexamples to innocuous conjectures out of nowhere, as you say. Really, what is guiding those counterexamples is a lot of time and experience spent with problems and the material. When you are reading the statement of a theorem, try seeing what happens when you omit a hypothesis to see what may go wrong, and talk to people about it, either here online or in person to share your thoughts. The more you learn, the more connections you will make, and eventually you will begin to see more as you synthesize that knowledge.
$endgroup$
add a comment |
$begingroup$
I think that it would indeed be odd for people to come up with exotic counterexamples to innocuous conjectures out of nowhere, as you say. Really, what is guiding those counterexamples is a lot of time and experience spent with problems and the material. When you are reading the statement of a theorem, try seeing what happens when you omit a hypothesis to see what may go wrong, and talk to people about it, either here online or in person to share your thoughts. The more you learn, the more connections you will make, and eventually you will begin to see more as you synthesize that knowledge.
$endgroup$
I think that it would indeed be odd for people to come up with exotic counterexamples to innocuous conjectures out of nowhere, as you say. Really, what is guiding those counterexamples is a lot of time and experience spent with problems and the material. When you are reading the statement of a theorem, try seeing what happens when you omit a hypothesis to see what may go wrong, and talk to people about it, either here online or in person to share your thoughts. The more you learn, the more connections you will make, and eventually you will begin to see more as you synthesize that knowledge.
answered 6 hours ago
Alex OrtizAlex Ortiz
11.7k21442
11.7k21442
add a comment |
add a comment |
Joe Martin is a new contributor. Be nice, and check out our Code of Conduct.
Joe Martin is a new contributor. Be nice, and check out our Code of Conduct.
Joe Martin is a new contributor. Be nice, and check out our Code of Conduct.
Joe Martin is a new contributor. Be nice, and check out our Code of Conduct.
Thanks for contributing an answer to Mathematics Stack Exchange!
- Please be sure to answer the question. Provide details and share your research!
But avoid …
- Asking for help, clarification, or responding to other answers.
- Making statements based on opinion; back them up with references or personal experience.
Use MathJax to format equations. MathJax reference.
To learn more, see our tips on writing great answers.
Sign up or log in
StackExchange.ready(function () {
StackExchange.helpers.onClickDraftSave('#login-link');
});
Sign up using Google
Sign up using Facebook
Sign up using Email and Password
Post as a guest
Required, but never shown
StackExchange.ready(
function () {
StackExchange.openid.initPostLogin('.new-post-login', 'https%3a%2f%2fmath.stackexchange.com%2fquestions%2f3202542%2fhow-to-be-good-at-coming-up-with-counter-example-in-topology%23new-answer', 'question_page');
}
);
Post as a guest
Required, but never shown
Sign up or log in
StackExchange.ready(function () {
StackExchange.helpers.onClickDraftSave('#login-link');
});
Sign up using Google
Sign up using Facebook
Sign up using Email and Password
Post as a guest
Required, but never shown
Sign up or log in
StackExchange.ready(function () {
StackExchange.helpers.onClickDraftSave('#login-link');
});
Sign up using Google
Sign up using Facebook
Sign up using Email and Password
Post as a guest
Required, but never shown
Sign up or log in
StackExchange.ready(function () {
StackExchange.helpers.onClickDraftSave('#login-link');
});
Sign up using Google
Sign up using Facebook
Sign up using Email and Password
Sign up using Google
Sign up using Facebook
Sign up using Email and Password
Post as a guest
Required, but never shown
Required, but never shown
Required, but never shown
Required, but never shown
Required, but never shown
Required, but never shown
Required, but never shown
Required, but never shown
Required, but never shown
$begingroup$
This article addresses the general questions that surround yours: On teaching mathematics
$endgroup$
– avs
5 hours ago
$begingroup$
Another general question: How to attack “if true, prove it; if not true, give a counterexample” question?
$endgroup$
– YuiTo Cheng
40 mins ago