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Terry Tao

Los Angeles

http://www.math.ucla.edu/~tao

Professor of Mathematics at UCLA
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Top Questions
110 votes

Does the inverse function theorem hold for everywhere differentiable maps?

ca.analysis-and-odes gn.general-topology asked Sep 9 '11 at 23:09
mathoverflow.net

90 votes

How small can a sum of a few roots of unity be?

nt.number-theory roots-of-unity algebraic-number-theory asked Nov 14 '10 at 20:54
mathoverflow.net

86 votes

Is there a high level reason why the inverse square law of gravitation yields periodic orbits without precession?

sg.symplectic-geometry hamiltonian-mechanics gravity-theory asked Oct 16 '19 at 15:23
mathoverflow.net

81 votes

How many orders of infinity are there?

lo.logic posets asked Jun 26 '10 at 17:40
mathoverflow.net

80 votes

Is there a natural random process that is rigorously known to produce Zipf's law?

pr.probability st.statistics stochastic-processes asked Sep 18 '10 at 16:24
mathoverflow.net

75 votes

Can a group be a universal Turing machine?

gr.group-theory computability-theory asked Feb 13 '12 at 19:50
mathoverflow.net

69 votes

Riemannian surfaces with an explicit distance function?

dg.differential-geometry mg.metric-geometry examples riemannian-geometry asked Sep 3 '10 at 19:06
mathoverflow.net

62 votes

Is this differential identity known?

reference-request ca.analysis-and-odes asked Jun 3 '15 at 16:06
mathoverflow.net

52 votes

When can one continuously prescribe a unit vector orthogonal to a given orthonormal system?

at.algebraic-topology grassmannians orthogonal-matrices asked Nov 5 '18 at 15:40
mathoverflow.net

48 votes

Small residue classes with small reciprocal

nt.number-theory asked Jul 5 '11 at 1:47
mathoverflow.net

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Top Answers
303
Examples of common false beliefs in mathematics
mathoverflow.net

252
Awfully sophisticated proof for simple facts
mathoverflow.net

211
Examples of unexpected mathematical images
mathoverflow.net

209
What are the benefits of writing vector inner products as $\langle u, v\rangle$ as opposed to $u^T v$?
mathoverflow.net

201
Why is a topology made up of 'open' sets?
mathoverflow.net

188
What is convolution intuitively?
mathoverflow.net

164
Examples of common false beliefs in mathematics
mathoverflow.net

154
Thinking and Explaining
mathoverflow.net

152
Knuth's intuition that Goldbach might be unprovable
mathoverflow.net

150
Is the series $\sum_n|\sin n|^n/n$ convergent?
mathoverflow.net

139
The “Dzhanibekov effect” - an exercise in mechanics or fiction? Explain mathematically a video from a space station
mathoverflow.net

126
Intuitive crutches for higher dimensional thinking
mathoverflow.net

124
Is the boundary $\partial S$ analogous to a derivative?
mathoverflow.net

94
Why do functions in complex analysis behave so well? (as opposed to functions in real analysis)
mathoverflow.net

90
Intuition for Integral Transforms
mathoverflow.net

84
Examples of common false beliefs in mathematics
mathoverflow.net

81
Mathematical habits of thought and action which would be of use to non-mathematicians
mathoverflow.net

81
If I exchange infinitely many digits of $\pi$ and $e$, are the two resulting numbers transcendental?
mathoverflow.net

81
How hard is it to compute the number of prime factors of a given integer?
mathoverflow.net

80
Polynomial representing all nonnegative integers
mathoverflow.net

78
Examples of common false beliefs in mathematics
mathoverflow.net

77
Colloquial catchy statements encoding serious mathematics
mathoverflow.net

75
Why is differentiating mechanics and integration art?
mathoverflow.net

75
Way to memorize relations between the Sobolev spaces?
mathoverflow.net

73
Are there proofs that you feel you did not “understand” for a long time?
mathoverflow.net

68
Results true in a dimension and false for higher dimensions
mathoverflow.net

67
Why are there so many smooth functions?
mathoverflow.net

66
Still Difficult After All These Years
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64
Why are proofs so valuable, although we do not know that our axiom system is consistent?
mathoverflow.net

58
Why is Fourier analysis so handy for proving the isoperimetric inequality?
mathoverflow.net

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