Ciro Santilli @cirosantilli 37

Can be contrasted with baryons as mentioned at baryon vs meson vs lepton.

Inferior compared to self-directed learning, but better than the traditional "everyone gets the same" approach.

Two lower case variants... both used in mathematical notation, and for some reason, in LaTeX \varphi is the one that actually looks like the default standard modern lowercase phi, while \phi is the weird one. I love life.

Ciro Santilli feels a bit like this guy:

One big divergence: obsession with translating every page into every language.

His Mathematics Genealogy Project entry: www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=56185

Old French website: spoirier.lautre.net/

singlesunion.org/ so cute, he's looking for true love!!! This is something Ciro often thinks about: why it is so difficult to find love without looking people in the eye. The same applies to jobs to some extent. He has an Incel wiki page: incels.wiki/w/Sylvain_Poirier :-)

The strongest are:

The main interest of this theorem is in classifying the indefinite orthogonal groups, which in turn is fundamental because the Lorentz group is an indefinite orthogonal groups, see: all indefinite orthogonal groups of matrices of equal metric signature are isomorphic.

It also tells us that a change of basis does not the alter the metric signature of a bilinear form, see matrix congruence can be seen as the change of basis of a bilinear form.

The theorem states that the number of 0, 1 and -1 in the metric signature is the same for two symmetric matrices that are congruent matrices.

For example, consider:

The eigenvalues of $A$ are $1$ and $4$, and the associated eigenvectors are:symPy code:and from the eigendecomposition of a real symmetric matrix we know that:

Now, instead of $P$, we could use $PE$, where $E$ is an arbitrary diagonal matrix of type:With this, would reach a new matrix $B$:Therefore, with this congruence, we are able to multiply the eigenvalues of $A$ by any positive number $e_1^2$ and $e_2^2$. Since we are multiplying by two arbitrary positive numbers, we cannot change the signs of the original eigenvalues, and so the metric signature is maintained, but respecting that any value can be reached.

Note that the matrix congruence relation looks a bit like the eigendecomposition of a matrix:but note that $D$ does not have to contain eigenvalues, unlike the eigendecomposition of a matrix. This is because here $S$ is not fixed to having eigenvectors in its columns.

But because the matrix is symmetric however, we could always choose $S$ to actually diagonalize as mentioned at eigendecomposition of a real symmetric matrix. Therefore, the metric signature can be seen directly from eigenvalues.

Also, because $D$ is a diagonal matrix, and thus symmetric, it must be that:

What this does represent, is a general change of basis that maintains the matrix a symmetric matrix.

Related:

Good:

Bad:

Some Obsidian digital gardens that would fit well with OurBigBook:

It good to think about how Euclid's postulates look like in the real projective plane:

Unlike the real projective line which is homotopic to the circle, the real projective plane is not homotopic to the sphere.

The topological difference bewteen the sphere and the real projective space is that for the sphere all those points in the x-y circle are identified to a single point.

One more generalized argument of this is the classification of closed surfaces, in which the real projective plane is a sphere with a hole cut and one Möbius strip glued in.