Forms of Nice Questions
You can invent striking and challenging problems with unique solution by building some symmetry into functional equations. Some are suitable for high school; others could generate college-level projects involving computer algebra. The problems are functional equations with group actions in the background. Interesting examples arise even from small finite groups. Whether a given problem ``works" with a given choice of constant coefficients depends on whether a related multilinear form is nonzero. These forms are essentially the classical group determinants studied by Frobenius in the nineteenth century.
Authors
- Anthony G. O’Farrell (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2784-5228)
Institutions
- Twitter (United States) (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- College Mathematics Journal
- Published
- 2025-04-21
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1080/07468342.2025.2485013
- Primary Topic
- History and Theory of Mathematics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00