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## Discussion Tag Cloud

Vanilla 1.1.10 is a product of Lussumo. More Information: Documentation, Community Support.

• CommentRowNumber1.
• CommentAuthorUrs
• CommentTime7 days ago
• (edited 7 days ago)

in the course of writing out proofs in elementary topology, i found it useful to be able to easily link to elementary statements in elementary set theory. So I created entries like

• CommentRowNumber2.
• CommentAuthorTodd_Trimble
• CommentTime7 days ago

This being the nLab, I would strongly urge that some explanation in terms of adjoints (specifically, an adjoint string $\exists_f \dashv f^\ast \dashv \forall_f$) be added. I would guess that most mathematicians do not know these properties in their bones, and a good time to start hammering this type of thing home is right in the undergraduate classroom.

I will probably add something along these lines soon, if there is no objection.

• CommentRowNumber3.
• CommentAuthorUrs
• CommentTime7 days ago

if there is no objection.

Certainly not!

• CommentRowNumber4.
• CommentAuthorTodd_Trimble
• CommentTime7 days ago

I wrote in, rather quickly, some arguments and remarks on this. But it may need more polishing. (More later, but I must dash now.)

The statement about countable unions of countable sets requires the countable axiom of choice, it should be noted.

• CommentRowNumber5.
• CommentAuthorUrs
• CommentTime7 days ago
• (edited 7 days ago)

Thanks, Todd. I have added a remark here mentioning yet more jargon, such as “base change” and “hyperdoctrine”. This could be much expanded further, but I also need to be doing something else now.

Eventually we want this kind of general discussiono at a more central place that we could link to from other entries, too. Maybe an entry titled adjunctions in elementary set theory or the like

• CommentRowNumber6.
• CommentAuthorTodd_Trimble
• CommentTime6 days ago

Urs, I made a few adjustments which I hope you don’t mind. It seems to me that thematically it works better to unify the pages on how images and pre-images interact with unions and intersections, so I renamed the page. To the Statements section I added the proposition on inverse images preserving unions and intersections, and I made a slight correction of one of the statements about direct images along injective functions. I haven’t harmonized all the notation the two of us are using.

There is at least one more thing I might want to add to your “jargon-y” remark, on Frobenius reciprocity, which relates to the bit about injective functions.

• CommentRowNumber7.
• CommentAuthorUrs
• CommentTime5 days ago
• (edited 5 days ago)

Thanks, Todd, that’s beautiful!

In that “jargon”-remark I added pointer to the general fact that adjoints preserve (co-)limits and then I used the occasion to give that statement a page of its own, too.

I have this vision now that we might eventually augment the series

with an “Introduction to Set Theory” that would proceed along just these lines: Give an introduction to traditional elementary set theory for readers with no background, but in doing so provide, without much ado, the correct picture that will make the reader inadvertently learn the categorical logic and type theory.

• CommentRowNumber8.
• CommentAuthorMike Shulman
• CommentTime5 days ago

This is a very nice-looking page, thanks guys.

• CommentRowNumber9.
• CommentAuthorUrs
• CommentTime5 days ago

I created a stub entry for Mikhail Yakovlevich Suslin, in particular since the first hit for “Suslin” is Andrei Suslin.

Todd, where it says in the footnote “There is a famous story…”, would it be easy to add some citation for this? Just for completeness.

• CommentRowNumber10.
• CommentAuthorUrs
• CommentTime5 days ago

While we are at it, I also gave an entry to hom-functor preserves limits.

But now I really need to be doing something else.

• CommentRowNumber11.
• CommentAuthorTodd_Trimble
• CommentTime5 days ago

Thanks for the nice feedback! I’ll add a citation for the story.

• CommentRowNumber12.
• CommentAuthorTodd_Trimble
• CommentTime5 days ago
• (edited 5 days ago)

Re #7: I like that vision, and I agree with the “not much ado”. I firmly believe it’s possible to teach undergraduates this way.

IIRC, somewhere in Paul Taylor’s book he likens the gentle introduction of categorical thinking just at the level of posets to a “trivium” (as in classical education), and the more concerted study for more general categories to a “quadrivium” – something at a higher level for those who have passed initiation through the trivium. Pedagogically, I think that’s exactly right, and when giving undergraduates their first taste of modern mathematics, e.g., their first real analysis course, you can sneak in categorical thinking almost entirely at the trivium level, where it gets used a lot (properties of sups and infs of sets of real numbers, unions, intersections, direct and inverse images, etc.). You don’t even have to say the words “category theory”, you just do it like it’s the most natural thing in the world (which it is).

• CommentRowNumber13.
• CommentAuthorRodMcGuire
• CommentTime4 days ago
• (edited 4 days ago)

 ugh. It posted before I had finished. I’ll try to finish tomorrow.

• CommentRowNumber14.
• CommentAuthorTodd_Trimble
• CommentTime2 days ago

Referring back to #1 in this discussion, I’ve added the proof (or proofs, both classical and constructive) to countable unions of countable sets are countable.

• CommentRowNumber15.
• CommentAuthorUrs
• CommentTime2 days ago

Thanks!