On 5/26/08, Fred lunnon <fred.lunnon@gmail.com> wrote:
On 5/26/08, Gareth McCaughan <gareth.mccaughan@pobox.com> wrote:
I'm not sure whether Fred's saying "I believe this but don't have a proof" or "I have a proof but it doesn't give any insight". In case it's the former, here's a proof that doesn't give very much insight. I suspect there's some coincidence at work here.
The proof I had relied on background "physics" which seemed to me unecessarily indirect. I had this feeling that there ought to be some method of dealing with such expressions that didn't rely on the special properties of tau. But I think your heroic computation confirms that these identities really are special, and there is (probably) no simple-minded algorithm for them.
Looking at my notes, I realise this claim was false --- the background had merely enabled me to guess the identity --- I had no proof, and no idea how to go about finding one. [But now I do --- just ask Gareth!] WFL