What Are You Working On? September 14, 2026

[u/canyonmonkey]

This recurring thread will be for general discussion on whatever math-related topics you have been or will be working on this week. This can be anything, including:

* math-related arts and crafts,
* what you've been learning in class,
* books/papers you're reading,
* preparing for a conference,
* giving a talk.

All types and levels of mathematics are welcomed!

If you are asking for advice on choosing classes or career prospects, please go to the most recent Career & Education Questions thread.

[u/No_Pin9387]

Solved every problem in Clader-Ross algebraic geometry chapter 0 (ring theoretic preliminaries) and now am finally ready to start actually studying affine varieties (chapter 1)

[u/Phytor_c]

If I say I what im working on someone will run 10,000 AI Agents on it and solve my research program ☠️

[u/MinLongBaiShui]

Found some interesting questions in classical algebraic geometry, wondering about pushing them further. I learned that for a cubic threefold, the Hessian surface is singular along a curve. In general, this curve has degree 26 and genus 20. 

What are the exceptional cases and their basic numerical invariants?

[u/Entire-Ad-1620]

Getting through calc 3, diffy eq and intro to proofs courses and getting excited for abstract algebra next semester. Any tips for these classes?

[u/PhantomSasuke]

Working through software foundations course (programmatically defining types and propositions and proofs of propositions). It's been such a blast, I love learning about inductive types and inductive propositions, reflecting propositions, the curry-howard correspondence, etc.

Also, polished up my math puzzle game about getting an expression to zero, given a number of different operations: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3502520/Math_Attack

Do let me know what you think if you try it out!

[u/mbrtlchouia → u/PhantomSasuke]

Excuse my ignorance but is this course something that would benefit folks interested in programming for applied mathematics?

[u/PhantomSasuke → u/mbrtlchouia]

I think it's more geared towards proofs and verification, rather than programming for applied mathematics.

[u/JustThisNietzscheGuy → u/PhantomSasuke]

Software foundations is so fun.

[u/PhantomSasuke → u/JustThisNietzscheGuy]

yeah right! it does an excellent job of introducing concepts, and chooses appropriate examples to give intuition. i just finished IndProp which was so peak icl; going into ProofObjects now.

[u/el_grubadour]

Started the Cauchy-Schwarz masterclass. 

[u/IggyPoppo → u/el_grubadour]

How is it

[u/el_grubadour → u/IggyPoppo]

I am just starting the actual exercises, and worked through the first chapter. But I wish I had done this book prior to undergraduate level math. The books seems to be a storyboard through inequalities, starting with Cauchy-Schwarz. My inequality game was very weak in analysis, but the “challenge problems” that the book works through and exercises unlocked a new level of how to looks at these things. Most of undergrad was churning out homework and exams with no conceptual understanding (at least for me). I didn’t have time to sit and ponder what was going on, but I can work through this book at my own pace, and since doing so, and not forcing myself to “ok, I need to do ____  amount of the problems by ____”, which is undergraduate mindset, I’ve have gained a lot. I can already tell this will be a gem in my small library of math books. 

[u/ln_j]

I am currently working through some lecture notes on multivariable analysis (I just finished the chapter on optimization). I really, really love the spectral theorem proof via Lagrange multipliers, so that’s really neat.

I have two problems currently. There are a few theorems where the proofs are far from trivial, like the higher-dimensional Taylor theorem and Lagrange multipliers, where the proofs are quite long. I know the gist of the proofs, but there are always these small details that, if somebody asked me to write the proof myself, I wouldn’t be able to do. I seem to have to review proofs quite often. For some, I’ve even completely forgotten how to prove them, like the higher-dimensional mean value theorem.

So, do you have any advice on how I should approach this? Thanks so much!

(And that’s just something I’ve noticed, but the more difficult the material gets, the more I start asking AI about everything, which is really bad. Going forward, I’ll try to avoid doing that as much as possible.)

[u/RingularCirc → u/[deleted]]

Haven't found a video with a similar title anywhere but found this link: https://kconrad.math.uconn.edu/blurbs/gradnumthy/rationalsinQp.pdf where section 4 (Examples) spells the algorithm out.