Postcards from the edge, or Snapshots of the theory of generalised Moonshine

This article covers my second talk at the Gathering for Gardner in March, 2010. It is about an Odd One Out puzzle I invented, after having been inspired by Martin Gardner. I do not like Odd One Out questions; that is why I invented one.

The mathematical study of infinity seems to have the ability to transport the mind to lofty and unusual realms. Decades ago, I was transported in this way by Rudy Rucker's book Infinity and the Mind. Despite much subsequent learning and teaching of mathematics in the service of physics and astronomy, there remained quite a few aspects of the "higher infinities" that I was still far from comprehending. Thus, I wanted to dive back in to understand those ideas and to find good w...

Mathematical conception of infinite quantities forms a cornerstone of many disciplines of modern mathematics --- from differential calculus to set theory. In fact, it could be argued that the most significant revolutions in mathematics in the modern period were always triggered by a development in our understanding of infinity. From the pedagogical point of view, the students' comprehension of the concept of infinity is a competence of interdisciplinary value, helping them to...

This is a historical talk about the recent confluence of two lines of research in equivariant elliptic cohomology, one concerned with connected Lie groups, the other with the finite case. These themes come together in (what seems to me remarkable) work of N. Ganter, relating replicability of McKay-Thompson series to the theory of exponential cohomology operations.

What would you do if you were asked to "add" knowledge? Would you say that "one plus one knowledge" is two "knowledges"? Less than that? More? Or something in between? Adding knowledge sounds strange, but it brings to the forefront questions that are as fundamental as they are eclectic. These are questions about the nature of knowledge and about the use of mathematics to model reality. In this chapter, I explore the mathematics of adding knowledge starting from what I believe...

We describe the finite subgraph $\mathfrak{M}$ of Conway's Big Picture required to describe all $171$ genus zero groups appearing in monstrous moonshine. We determine the local structure of $\mathfrak{M}$ and give a purely group-theoretic description of this picture, based on powers of the conjugacy classes $24J$ and $8C$. We expect similar results to hold for umbral moonshine groups and give the details for the largest Mathieu group $M_{24}$.

Motivated by the appearance of penumbral moonshine, and by evidence that penumbral moonshine enjoys an extensive relationship to generalized monstrous moonshine via infinite products, we establish a general construction in this work which uses singular theta lifts and a concrete construction at the level of modules for a finite group to translate between moonshine in weight one-half and moonshine in weight zero. This construction serves as a foundation for a companion paper i...

In this article, we employ mathematical concepts as a tool to examine the phenomenon of consciousness experience and logical phenomena. Through our investigation, we aim to demonstrate that our experiences, while not confined to limitations, cannot be neatly encapsulated within a singular collection. Our conscious experience emerges as a result of the developmental and augmentative trajectory of our cognitive system. As our cognitive abilities undergo refinement and advanceme...

Computer science provides an in-depth understanding of technical aspects of programming concepts, but if we want to understand how programming concepts evolve, how programmers think and talk about them and how they are used in practice, we need to consider a broader perspective that includes historical, philosophical and cognitive aspects. In this paper, we develop such broader understanding of monads, a programming concept that has an infamous formal definition, syntactic su...

Presented here are over one hundred conjectures ranging from easy to difficult, from many mathematical fields. I also summarize briefly methods and tools that have led to this collection.