Compactness and contradiction Terence Tao Department of Mathematics, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095 E-mail address:
[email protected] To Garth Gaudry, who set me on the road; To my family, for their constant support; And to the readers of my blog, for their feedback and contributions. Contents Preface xi A remark on notation xi Acknowledgments xii Chapter 1. Logic and foundations 1 x1.1. Material implication 1 x1.2. Errors in mathematical proofs 2 x1.3. Mathematical strength 4 x1.4. Stable implications 6 x1.5. Notational conventions 8 x1.6. Abstraction 9 x1.7. Circular arguments 11 x1.8. The classical number systems 12 x1.9. Round numbers 15 x1.10. The \no self-defeating object" argument, revisited 16 x1.11. The \no self-defeating object" argument, and the vagueness paradox 28 x1.12. A computational perspective on set theory 35 Chapter 2. Group theory 51 x2.1. Torsors 51 x2.2. Active and passive transformations 54 x2.3. Cayley graphs and the geometry of groups 56 x2.4. Group extensions 62 vii viii Contents x2.5. A proof of Gromov's theorem 69 Chapter 3. Analysis 79 x3.1. Orders of magnitude, and tropical geometry 79 x3.2. Descriptive set theory vs. Lebesgue set theory 81 x3.3. Complex analysis vs. real analysis 82 x3.4. Sharp inequalities 85 x3.5. Implied constants and asymptotic notation 87 x3.6. Brownian snowflakes 88 x3.7. The Euler-Maclaurin formula, Bernoulli numbers, the zeta function, and real-variable analytic continuation 88 x3.8. Finitary consequences of the invariant subspace problem 104 x3.9.