Aviezri S. Fraenkel spoke in the Queens College Mathematics Colloquium on October 19, 2009.

Title: Guide for Painless Creation of Math Papers

Abstract:
1. Prepare a talk at a conference. If you are like me, who abhors preparing talks, let your thoughts wander instead to more creative topics. Recently, I wrote two short papers in one week while preparing a talk words2009.dia.unisa.it/, September 14--18.

2. Become an editor (not an editor-in-chief, which is too much hassle). Then you see papers containing conjectures. Prove them or provide counterexamples. Then let the author(s) choose whether to publish jointly or separately.

3. Formulate one or two conjectures of your own which are not easily settled. People will begin working on them (google: fraenkel conjecture).

4. The on-line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences is a very useful and fruitful tool for formulating/checking conjectures. While comparing a recent paper with a result of mine using the Encyclopedia, I found an anomaly in the latter which led to a tidbit paper.

5. Get invited to Ph.D. theses defenses, where you will normally spend a few extra days working with the candidate and the advisor before flying home. This often leads to very fruitful collaborations.

6. Use various combinations/compositions of the above.

Examples/illustrations/short proofs will be provided.

Remarks: (i) Keep pondering one or two deep math problems while engaged in the above. (ii) I prepared this abstract while under pressure to produce results for a talk westga.edu/~math/IntegersConference2009/, October 14--17.