# Tag Archives: math

## Math 100 Fall 2016: Concluding Remarks

It is that time of year. Classes are over. Campus is emptying. Soon it will be mostly emptiness, snow, and grad students (who of course never leave).

I like to take some time to reflect on the course. How did it go? What went well and what didn’t work out? And now that all the numbers are in, we can examine course trends and data.

Since numbers are direct and graphs are pretty, let’s look at the numbers first.

## Math 100 grades at a glance

Let’s get an understanding of the distribution of grades in the course, all at once.

These are classic box plots. The center line of each box denotes the median. The left and right ends of the box indicate the 1st and 3rd quartiles. As a quick reminder, the 1st quartile is the point where 25% of students received that grade or lower. The 3rd quartile is the point where 75% of students received that grade or lower. So within each box lies 50% of the course.

Each box has two arms (or “whiskers”) extending out, indicating the other grades of students. Points that are plotted separately are statistical outliers, which means that they are $1.5 \cdot (Q_3 – Q_1)$ higher than $Q_3$ or lower than $Q_1$ (where $Q_1$ denotes the first quartile and $Q_3$ indicates the third quartile).

Within each blob, you’ll notice an embedded box-and-whisker graph. The white dots indicate the medians, and the thicker black parts indicate the central 50% of the grade. The width of the colored blobs roughly indicate how many students scored within that region. [As an aside, each blob actually has the same area, so the area is a meaningful data point].

Posted in Brown University, Math 100, Mathematics, Teaching | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

## Paper: Sign Changes of Coefficients and Sums of Coefficients of Cusp Forms

This is joint work with Thomas Hulse, Chan Ieong Kuan, and Alex Walker, and is a another sequel to our previous work. This is the third in a trio of papers, and completes an answer to a question posed by our advisor Jeff Hoffstein two years ago.

We have just uploaded a preprint to the arXiv giving conditions that guarantee that a sequence of numbers contains infinitely many sign changes. More generally, if the sequence consists of complex numbers, then we give conditions that guarantee sign changes in a generalized sense.

Let $\mathcal{W}(\theta_1, \theta_2) := { re^{i\theta} : r \geq 0, \theta \in [\theta_1, \theta_2]}$ denote a wedge of complex plane.

Suppose ${a(n)}$ is a sequence of complex numbers satisfying the following conditions:

1. $a(n) \ll n^\alpha$,
2. $\sum_{n \leq X} a(n) \ll X^\beta$,
3. $\sum_{n \leq X} \lvert a(n) \rvert^2 = c_1 X^{\gamma_1} + O(X^{\eta_1})$,

where $\alpha, \beta, c_1, \gamma_1$, and $\eta_1$ are all real numbers $\geq 0$. Then for any $r$ satisfying $\max(\alpha+\beta, \eta_1) – (\gamma_1 – 1) < r < 1$, the sequence ${a(n)}$ has at least one term outside any wedge $\mathcal{W}(\theta_1, \theta_2)$ with $0 \theta_2 – \theta_1 < \pi$ for some $n \in [X, X+X^r)$ for all sufficiently large $X$.

These wedges can be thought of as just slightly smaller than a half-plane. For a complex number to escape a half plane is analogous to a real number changing sign. So we should think of this result as guaranteeing a sort of sign change in intervals of width $X^r$ for all sufficiently large $X$.

The intuition behind this result is very straightforward. If the sum of coefficients is small while the sum of the squares of the coefficients are large, then the sum of coefficients must experience a lot of cancellation. The fact that we can get quantitative results on the number of sign changes is merely a task of bookkeeping.

Both the statement and proof are based on very similar criteria for sign changes when ${a(n)}$ is a sequence of real numbers first noticed by Ram Murty and Jaban Meher. However, if in addition it is known that

\sum_{n \leq X} (a(n))^2 = c_2 X^{\gamma_2} + O(X^{\eta_2}),

and that $\max(\alpha+\beta, \eta_1, \eta_2) – (\max(\gamma_1, \gamma_2) – 1) < r < 1$, then generically both sequences ${\text{Re} (a(n)) }$ and ${ \text{Im} (a(n)) }$ contain at least one sign change for some $n$ in $[X , X + X^r)$ for all sufficiently large $X$. In other words, we can detect sign changes for both the real and imaginary parts in intervals, which is a bit more special.

It is natural to ask for even more specific detection of sign changes. For instance, knowing specific information about the distribution of the arguments of $a(n)$ would be interesting, and very closely reltated to the Sato-Tate Conjectures. But we do not yet know how to investigate this distribution.

In practice, we often understand the various criteria for the application of these two sign changes results by investigating the Dirichlet series
\begin{align}
&\sum_{n \geq 1} \frac{a(n)}{n^s} \\
&\sum_{n \geq 1} \frac{S_f(n)}{n^s} \\
&\sum_{n \geq 1} \frac{\lvert S_f(n) \rvert^2}{n^s} \\
&\sum_{n \geq 1} \frac{S_f(n)^2}{n^s},
\end{align}
where

S_f(n) = \sum_{m \leq n} a(n).

In the case of holomorphic cusp forms, the two previous joint projects with this group investigated exactly the Dirichlet series above. In the paper, we formulate some slightly more general criteria guaranteeing sign changes based directly on the analytic properties of the Dirichlet series involved.

In this paper, we apply our sign change results to our previous work to show that $S_f(n)$ changes sign in each interval $[X, X + X^{\frac{2}{3} + \epsilon})$ for sufficiently large $X$. Further, if there are coefficients with $\text{Im} a(n) \neq 0$, then the real and imaginary parts each change signs in those intervals.

We apply our sign change results to single coefficients of $\text{GL}(2)$ cusp forms (and specifically full integral weight holomorphic cusp forms, half-integral weight holomorphic cusp forms, and Maass forms). In large part these are minor improvements over folklore and what is known, except for the extension to complex coefficients.

We also apply our sign change results to single isolated coefficients $A(1,m)$ of $\text{GL}(3)$ Maass forms. This seems to be a novel result, and adds to the very sparse literature on sign changes of sequences associated to $\text{GL}(3)$ objects. Murty and Meher recently proved a general sign change result for $\text{GL}(n)$ objects which is similar in feel.

As a final application, we also consider sign changes of partial sums of $\nu$-normalized coefficients. Let

S_f^\nu(X) := \sum_{n \leq X} \frac{a(n)}{n^{\nu}}.

As $\nu$ gets larger, the individual coefficients $a(n)n^{-\nu}$ become smaller. So one should expect that sign changes in ${S_f^\nu(n)}$ to change based on $\nu$. And in particular, as $\nu$ gets very large, the number of sign changes of $S_f^\nu$ should decrease.

Interestingly, in the case of holomorphic cusp forms of weight $k$, we are able to show that there are sign changes of $S_f^\nu(n)$ in intervals even for normalizations $\nu$ a bit above $\nu = \frac{k-1}{2}$. This is particularly interesting as $a(n) \ll n^{\frac{k-1}{2} + \epsilon}$, so for $\nu > \frac{k-1}{2}$ the coefficients are \emph{decreasing} with $n$. We are able to show that when $\nu = \frac{k-1}{2} + \frac{1}{6} – \epsilon$, the sequence ${S_f^\nu(n)}$ has at least one sign change for $n$ in $[X, 2X)$ for all sufficiently large $X$.

It may help to consider a simpler example to understand why this is surprising. Consider the classic example of a sequence of $b(n)$, where $b(n) = 1$ or $b(n) = -1$, randomly, with equal probability. Then the expected size of the sums of $b(n)$ is about $\sqrt n$. This is an example of \emph{square-root cancellation}, and such behaviour is a common point of comparison. Similarly, the number of sign changes of the partial sums of $b(n)$ is also expected to be about $\sqrt n$.

Suppose now that $b(n) = \frac{\pm 1}{\sqrt n}$. If the first term is $1$, then it takes more then the second term being negative to make the overall sum negative. And if the first two terms are positive, then it would take more then the following three terms being negative to make the overall sum negative. So sign changes of the partial sums are much rarer. In fact, they’re exceedingly rare, and one might barely detect more than a dozen through computational experiment (although one should still expect infinitely many).

This regularity, in spite of the decreasing size of the individual coefficients $a(n)n^{-\nu}$, suggests an interesting regularity in the sign changes of the individual $a(n)$. We do not know how to understand or measure this effect or its regularity, and for now it remains an entirely qualitative observation.

For more details and specific references, see the paper on the arXiv.

## Estimating the number of squarefree integers up to $X$

I recently wrote an answer to a question on MSE about estimating the number of squarefree integers up to $X$. Although the result is known and not too hard, I very much like the proof and my approach. So I write it down here.

First, let’s see if we can understand why this “should” be true from an analytic perspective.

We know that
$$\sum_{n \geq 1} \frac{\mu(n)^2}{n^s} = \frac{\zeta(s)}{\zeta(2s)},$$
and a general way of extracting information from Dirichlet series is to perform a cutoff integral transform (or a type of Mellin transform). In this case, we get that
$$\sum_{n \leq X} \mu(n)^2 = \frac{1}{2\pi i} \int_{(2)} \frac{\zeta(s)}{\zeta(2s)} X^s \frac{ds}{s},$$
where the contour is the vertical line $\text{Re }s = 2$. By Cauchy’s theorem, we shift the line of integration left and poles contribute terms or large order. The pole of $\zeta(s)$ at $s = 1$ has residue
$$\frac{X}{\zeta(2)},$$
so we expect this to be the leading order. Naively, since we know that there are no zeroes of $\zeta(2s)$ on the line $\text{Re } s = \frac{1}{2}$, we might expect to push our line to exactly there, leading to an error of $O(\sqrt X)$. But in fact, we know more. We know the zero-free region, which allows us to extend the line of integration ever so slightly inwards, leading to a $o(\sqrt X)$ result (or more specifically, something along the lines of $O(\sqrt X e^{-c (\log X)^\alpha})$ where $\alpha$ and $c$ come from the strength of our known zero-free region.

In this heuristic analysis, I have omitted bounding the top, bottom, and left boundaries of the rectangles of integration. But proceeding in a similar way as in the proof of the analytic prime number theorem, you could proceed here. So we expect the answer to look like
$$\frac{X}{\zeta(2)} + O(\sqrt X e^{-c (\log X)^\alpha})$$
using no more than the zero-free region that goes into the prime number theorem.

We will now prove this result, but in an entirely elementary way (except that I will refer to a result from the prime number theorem). This is below the fold.

## Notes from a talk on the Mean Value Theorem

1. Introduction

When I first learned the Mean Value Theorem and the Intermediate Value Theorem, I thought they were both intuitively obvious and utterly useless. In one of my courses in analysis, I was struck when, after proving the Mean Value Theorem, my instructor said that all of calculus was downhill from there. But it was a case of not being able to see the forest for the trees, and I missed the big picture.

I have since come to realize that almost every major (and often, minor) result of calculus is a direct and immediate consequence of the Mean Value Theorem and the Intermediate Value Theorem. In this talk, we will focus on the forest, the big picture, and see the Mean Value Theorem for what it really is: the true Fundamental Theorem of Calculus.

Posted in Expository, Mathematics | | 2 Comments

## Continuity of the Mean Value

1. Introduction

When I first learned the mean value theorem as a high schooler, I was thoroughly unimpressed. Part of this was because it’s just like Rolle’s Theorem, which feels obvious. But I think the greater part is because I thought it was useless. And I continued to think it was useless until I began my first proof-oriented treatment of calculus as a second year at Georgia Tech. Somehow, in the interceding years, I learned to value intuition and simple statements.

I have since completely changed my view on the mean value theorem. I now consider essentially all of one variable calculus to be the Mean Value Theorem, perhaps in various forms or disguises. In my earlier note An Intuitive Introduction to Calculus, we state and prove the Mean Value Theorem, and then show that we can prove the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus with the Mean Value Theorem and the Intermediate Value Theorem (which also felt silly to me as a high schooler, but which is not silly).

In this brief note, I want to consider one small aspect of the Mean Value Theorem: can the “mean value” be chosen continuously as a function of the endpoints? To state this more clearly, first recall the theorem:

Suppose ${f}$ is a differentiable real-valued function on an interval ${[a,b]}$. Then there exists a point ${c}$ between ${a}$ and ${b}$ such that $$\frac{f(b) – f(a)}{b – a} = f'(c), \tag{1}$$
which is to say that there is a point where the slope of ${f}$ is the same as the average slope from ${a}$ to ${b}$.

What if we allow the interval to vary? Suppose we are interested in a differentiable function ${f}$ on intervals of the form ${[0,b]}$, and we let ${b}$ vary. Then for each choice of ${b}$, the mean value theorem tells us that there exists ${c_b}$ such that $$\frac{f(b) – f(0)}{b} = f'(c_b).$$
Then the question we consider today is, as a function of ${b}$, can ${c_b}$ be chosen continuously? We will see that we cannot, and we’ll see explicit counterexamples. This, after the fold.

## Review of How Not to Be Wrong by Jordan Ellenberg

Almost 100 years ago as I write this, on 21 October 1914, Martin Gardner was born. He wrote a popular “Mathematical Games” column for Scientific American from 1957 to 1981, introducing a wide audience to fun and recreational mathematics. His influence and writing were so profound that many of his subjects are still popular today. Notable examples include:

## Conway’s Game of Life

After its first public appearance in Gardner’s Scientific American column in October 1970, Conway’s Game of Life grew to enormous popularity and interest.

## Flexagons

The column “Mathematical Games” started with Gardner’s article on flexagons. The editor of Scientific American thought Gardner’s flexagons was engaging, and suggested that Gardner write a regular column. Fortunately, Gardner acceded.

## Public Key Cryptography

The first major public key cryptosystem, the RSA system, first appeared in Gardner’s August 1977 column. (Their formal paper appeared in 1978 in Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery). Now, public key cryptography is used everywhere, all the time, mostly without the conscious thought of the user.

Martin Gardner was in constant contact with many mathematicians, and always looked for interesting recreational mathematics to share with his readers. He inspired an entire generation of mathematicians and math enthusiasts. He also inspired others to pursue popular mathematics writing (and blogging, and even youtubing, such as the excellent series produced by Vi Hart).

The current issue(October/November 2014) of the MAA Focus, a mathematical newsmagazine from the American Mathematical Association, features Martin Gardner. In addition to describing some of Gardner’s contributions and legacy, the article includes a quote from Gardner: “I’ve always thought that the best way to get students interested in mathematics is to give them something that has a recreational flavor — a puzzle or a magic trick or a paradox, or something like that. I think that hooks their interest faster than anything else.” Later, he is also quoted to say “It’s good to to know much about mathematics. I have to work hard to understand anything that I am writing about, so that makes it easier for me to explain it, perhaps, in a way that the general public can understand.”

(As an aside, the Doctor has noted the lack of recreational mathematics in school too)

It is in this noble succession that I consider Jordan Ellenberg’s recent book How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking, for Ellenberg has made a significant effort to make an approachable, inspiring work (even though it’s not recreational math). After reading the book, it seems clear to me that Ellenberg’s beliefs about how to interest people in mathematics mirror Gardner’s. This book is full of paradoxes and magic tricks. Or rather this book is full of captivating stories each centered around a problem or misconception, and whose resolution comes through careful and explicit reasoning.

Ellenberg presents mathematics as “an extension of common sense by other means,” but I get the feeling that he means to blur what it means to be “common sense” and what it means to be “other means” as the book advances. Much as a textbook or college course eases students into the subject, starting simple and getting progressively deeper, Ellenberg starts with problems that are undeniably simple logic and ends with ideas that are truly profound.

The reader is engaged within the first five pages. After a quick justification about learning mathematics — mathematics is reason, and allows for deeper understanding of the world around us — Ellenberg demonstrates that this is not an abstract book about abstract mathematics, but is instead full of actual examples. And he begins with a tale about Abraham Wald, a mathematician and statistician considering where to reinforce the armor of planes during the Second World War. The writing is conversational, as though this were an oral history transcribed and kept safe in written word. To support the claim that mathematics is an extension of common sense, the book alternates between explaining and setting up problems and careful, but common sensical, analysis. And most of the time, he proceeds without overwhelming the reader with arithmetic details or a flood of equations.

Mathematics is not arithmetic. Yes, arithmetic is one tiny part of mathematics, but mathematics is much more. The typical student is overexposed to arithmetic and underexposed to mathematics. Stories like Abraham Wald seek to rectify this imbalance by demonstrating more mathematics. And later stories, like the chapter about challenges facing Netflix analytics — how does Netflix know what movies to recommend? — use equations and arithmetic to support the underlying mathematics.

It might seem like a delicate arrangement to go through so much mathematical reasoning with so little arithmetic, but Ellenberg succeeds. Part of this is certainly that this is a book full of what he calls “simple and profound” mathematics. The simple is what allows the conversational tone. The profound is what makes it interesting. But the larger part is that Ellenberg’s thesis, math is common sense and allows for deeper understanding of the world around us, is fundamentally true. And quite beautiful.

Ellenberg does truly get to some profound mathematics. Some of the chapter is common material for popular mathematics: survivorship bias, statistics lie, and the high likelihood of coincidence, for instance. But in many ways, he goes deeper, and more profound, than I would expect. He examines with great detail the divide in statistics between Fisher’s “significance testing” and Pearson’s “hypothesis testing,” and evidences deep dissatisfaction with the accepted standard in experiments and hypothesis testing of “Reductio ad unlikely.” He not only mentions and cautions misunderstandings about conditional probabilities, but also undertakes Bayesian inference as a decision-making model, perhaps even a good model for how we make our own decisions.

He makes a strong point that sometimes, mathematics does not have all the answers. Or more pertinently, sometimes the answer from mathematics is inaction. For this is action, this not being sure! Although Ellenberg never says it, he hints at the fact that saying anything meaningful about anything at all can be really hard, and sometimes even impossible.

Of course, the book is not without its flaws. Most chapters have their central players, central ideas, and a sort of take home message. But I found the last two chapters to suffer from a bit of indigestion. This might be because they concern the very idea of “existence.” Does public opinion exist as a measurable, or even well-defined quantity? Lurking beneath these two chapters is the problem of designing good, accurate voting systems. Though Ellenberg emphasizes Arrow’s paradox on the impossibility of having a rank order voting system that accurately reflects community opinion, this message is muddied.

And though Ellenberg confronts some of the common misunderstandings of mathematics, like thinking that all mathematics is simple arithmetic and boring, there is one more misunderstanding that I wish he tackled more explicitly, which is that there is room for more mathematics all the time. It is easy to read this book, look at how common sense and mathematics can feel so alike, and sleep comfortably under the sheets at night knowing that these mathematicians have solved all these hard problems for us. But really, more mathematics is needed in both academic and ordinary walks of life.

I think it should also be mentioned that Ellenberg’s rejection of the cult of genius, including the idea that it takes a genius to succeed in mathematics and the far worse idea that we depend on geniuses to progress the sciences, is both good and from an interesting position. Ellenberg was one of the child “geniuses” in the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth, which found and followed high-performing children and followed them throughout their lives. In an article in the Wall Street Journal, Ellenberg wrote of the dangers of the cult of genius. He also wrote that we need more math majors who don’t become mathematicians. Math and the sciences are not only progressed by the top 0.01 percent, but instead are more often advanced by the hard work and determination of someone who pursued their interests and ignored the cult. For more, read his article. It’s not very long, and it rounds out the end of “How Not to Be Wrong” very nicely.

Ultimately, “How Not to Be Wrong” is a great read that I highly recommend, both to a mathematical and non-mathematical crowd. It’s an engaging and educational read that’s not afraid to do some real math. After finishing the book, part of me wondered if more mathematics should be taught against the history of the mathematicians themselves. Why is it that I learned the development and logic of chemistry along the lives of the chemists of the past while in middle and high school, but I heard almost no mathematician’s name until I began to major in college? This book is literally a tour-de-mathematical-force throughout recent history, and in the spirit of Martin Gardner. I look forward to reading more of his work.

## Another proof of Wilson’s Theorem

While teaching a largely student-discovery style elementary number theory course to high schoolers at the Summer@Brown program, we were looking for instructive but interesting problems to challenge our students. By we, I mean Alex Walker, my academic little brother, and me. After a bit of experimentation with generators and orders, we stumbled across a proof of Wilson’s Theorem, different than the standard proof.

Wilson’s theorem is a classic result of elementary number theory, and is used in some elementary texts to prove Fermat’s Little Theorem, or to introduce primality testing algorithms that give no hint of the factorization.

Theorem 1 (Wilson’s Theorem) For a prime number ${p}$, we have $$(p-1)! \equiv -1 \pmod p. \tag{1}$$

The theorem is clear for ${p = 2}$, so we only consider proofs for “odd primes ${p}$.”

The standard proof of Wilson’s Theorem included in almost every elementary number theory text starts with the factorial ${(p-1)!}$, the product of all the units mod ${p}$. Then as the only elements which are their own inverses are ${\pm 1}$ (as ${x^2 \equiv 1 \pmod p \iff p \mid (x^2 – 1) \iff p\mid x+1}$ or ${p \mid x-1}$), every element in the factorial multiples with its inverse to give ${1}$, except for ${-1}$. Thus ${(p-1)! \equiv -1 \pmod p.} \diamondsuit$

Now we present a different proof.

Take a primitive root ${g}$ of the unit group ${(\mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z})^\times}$, so that each number ${1, \ldots, p-1}$ appears exactly once in ${g, g^2, \ldots, g^{p-1}}$. Recalling that ${1 + 2 + \ldots + n = \frac{n(n+1)}{2}}$ (a great example of classical pattern recognition in an elementary number theory class), we see that multiplying these together gives ${(p-1)!}$ on the one hand, and ${g^{(p-1)p/2}}$ on the other.

As ${g^{(p-1)/2}}$ is a solution to ${x^2 \equiv 1 \pmod p}$, and it is not ${1}$ since ${g}$ is a generator and thus has order ${p-1}$. So ${g^{(p-1)/2} \equiv -1 \pmod p}$, and raising ${-1}$ to an odd power yields ${-1}$, completing the proof $\diamondsuit$.

After posting this, we have since seen that this proof is suggested in a problem in Ireland and Rosen’s extremely good number theory book. But it was pleasant to see it come up naturally, and it’s nice to suggest to our students that you can stumble across proofs.

It may be interesting to question why ${x^2 \equiv 1 \pmod p \iff x \equiv \pm 1 \pmod p}$ appears in a fundamental way in both proofs.

This post appears on the author’s personal website davidlowryduda.com and on the Math.Stackexchange Community Blog math.blogoverflow.com. It is also available in pdf note form. It was typeset in \TeX, hosted on WordPress sites, converted using the utility github.com/davidlowryduda/mse2wp, and displayed with MathJax.

Posted in Expository, Math.NT, Mathematics | | 1 Comment

## Trigonometric and related substitutions in integrals

$\DeclareMathOperator{\csch}{csch}$
$\DeclareMathOperator{\sech}{sech}$
$\DeclareMathOperator{\arsinh}{arsinh}$

1. Introduction

In many ways, a first semester of calculus is a big ideas course. Students learn the basics of differentiation and integration, and some of the big-hitting theorems like the Fundamental Theorems of Calculus. Even in a big ideas course, students learn how to differentiate any reasonable combination of polynomials, trig, exponentials, and logarithms (elementary functions).

But integration skills are not pushed nearly as far. Do you ever wonder why? Even at the end of the first semester of calculus, there are many elementary functions that students cannot integrate. But the reason isn’t that there wasn’t enough time, but instead that integration is hard. And when I say hard, I mean often impossible. And when I say impossible, I don’t mean unsolved, but instead provably impossible (and when I say impossible, I mean that we can’t always integrate and get a nice function out, unlike our ability to differentiate any nice function and get a nice function back). An easy example is the sine integral $$\int \frac{\sin x}{x} \mathrm d x,$$
which cannot be expressed in terms of elementary functions. In short, even though the derivative of an elementary function is always an elementary function, the antiderivative of elementary functions don’t need to be elementary.

Worse, even when antidifferentiation is possible, it might still be really hard. This is the first problem that a second semester in calculus might try to address, meaning that students learn a veritable bag of tricks of integration techniques. These might include ${u}$-substitution and integration by parts (which are like inverses of the chain rule and product rule, respectively), and then the relatively more complicated techniques like partial fraction decomposition and trig substitution.

In this note, we are going to take a closer look at problems related to trig substitution, and some related ideas. We will assume familiarity with ${u}$-substitution and integration by parts, and we might even use them here from time to time. This, after the fold.

## A bit more about partial fraction decomposition

This is a short note written for my students in Math 170, talking about partial fraction decomposition and some potentially confusing topics that have come up. We’ll remind ourselves what partial fraction decomposition is, and unlike the text, we’ll prove it. Finally, we’ll look at some pitfalls in particular. All this after the fold.

1. The Result Itself

We are interested in rational functions and their integrals. Recall that a polynomial ${f(x)}$ is a function of the form ${f(x) = a_nx^n + a_{n-1}x^{n-1} + \cdots + a_1x + a_0}$, where the ${a_i}$ are constants and ${x}$ is our “intederminate” — and which we commonly imagine standing for a number (but this is not necessary).

Then a rational function ${R(x)}$ is a ratio of two polynomials ${p(x)}$ and ${q(x)}$, $$R(x) = \frac{p(x)}{q(x)}.$$

Then the big result concerning partial fractions is the following:

If ${R(x) = \dfrac{p(x)}{q(x)}}$ is a rational function and the degree of ${p(x)}$ is less than the degree of ${q(x)}$, and if ${q(x)}$ factors into $$q(x) = (x-r_1)^{k_1}(x-r_2)^{k_2} \dots (x-r_l)^{k_l} (x^2 + a_{1,1}x + a_{1,2})^{v_1} \ldots (x^2 + a_{m,1}x + a_{m,2})^{v_m},$$
then ${R(x)}$ can be written as a sum of fractions of the form ${\dfrac{A}{(x-r)^k}}$ or ${\dfrac{Ax + B}{(x^2 + a_1x + a_2)^v}}$, where in particular

• If ${(x-r)}$ appears in the denominator of ${R(x)}$, then there is a term ${\dfrac{A}{x – r}}$
• If ${(x-r)^k}$ appears in the denominator of ${R(x)}$, then there is a collection of terms $$\frac{A_1}{x-r} + \frac{A_2}{(x-r)^2} + \dots + \frac{A_k}{(x-r)^k}$$
• If ${x^2 + ax + b}$ appears in the denominator of ${R(x)}$, then there is a term ${\dfrac{Ax + B}{x^2 + ax + b}}$
• If ${(x^2 + ax + b)^v}$ appears in the denominator of ${R(x)}$, then there is a collection of terms $$\frac{A_1x + B_1}{x^2 + ax + b} + \frac{A_2 x + B_2}{(x^2 + ax + b)^2} + \dots \frac{A_v x + B_v}{(x^2 + ax + b)^v}$$

where in each of these, the capital ${A}$ and ${B}$ represent some constants that can be solved for through basic algebra.

I state this result this way because it is the one that leads to integrals that we can evaluate. But in principle, this theorem can be restated in a couple different ways.

Let’s parse this theorem through an example – the classic example, after the fold.

## Functional Equations for L-Functions arising from Modular Forms

In this note, I remind myself of the functional equations for the ${L}$-functions ${\displaystyle \sum_{n\geq 0} \frac{a(n)}{n^s}}$ and ${\displaystyle \sum_{n\geq 0} \frac{a(n)}{n^s}e(\frac{n\overline{r}}{c})}$, where ${\overline{r}}$ is the multiplicative inverse of ${r \bmod c}$.