We determine the smallest possible canonical height for a non-torsion point P of an elliptic curve E over a function field ℂ(t) of discriminant degree 12n with a 2-torsion point for n=1,2,3, and with a 3-torsion point for n=1,2. For each m=2,3, we parametrize the set of triples (E,P,T) of an elliptic curve E/ℚ with a rational point P and m-torsion point T that satisfy certain integrality conditions by an open subset of ℙ2. We recover explicit equations for all elliptic surfaces (E,P,T) attaining each minimum by locating them as curves in our projective models. We also prove that for n=1,2 , these heights are minimal for elliptic curves over a function field of any genus. In each case, the optimal (E,P,T) are characterized by their patterns of integral points.

We determine the minimal density of triangles in a tripartite graph with prescribed edge densities. This extends a previous result of Bondy, Shen, Thomassé and Thomassen characterizing those edge densities guaranteeing the existence of a triangle in a tripartite graph. To be precise we show that a suitably weighted copy of the graph formed by deleting a certain 9-cycle from K3,3,3 has minimal triangle density among all weighted tripartite graphs with prescribed edge densities.

Supplementary materials are available with this article.

The four colour theorem states that the vertices of every planar graph can be coloured with at most four colours so that no two adjacent vertices receive the same colour. This theorem is famous for many reasons, including the fact that its original 1977 proof includes a non-trivial computer verification. Recently, a formal proof of the theorem was obtained with the equational logic program Coq [G. Gonthier, ‘Formal proof–the four color theorem’, Notices of Amer. Math. Soc. 55 (2008) no. 11, 1382–1393]. In this paper we describe an implementation of the computational method introduced by C. S. Calude and co-workers [Evaluating the complexity of mathematical problems. Part 1’, Complex Systems 18 (2009) 267–285; A new measure of the difficulty of problems’, J. Mult. Valued Logic Soft Comput. 12 (2006) 285–307] to evaluate the complexity of the four colour theorem. Our method uses a Diophantine equational representation of the theorem. We show that the four colour theorem is in the complexity class ℭU,4. For comparison, the Riemann hypothesis is in class ℭU,3 while Fermat’s last theorem is in class ℭU,1.

We investigate the representations and the structure of Hecke algebras associated to certain finite complex reflection groups. We first describe computational methods for the construction of irreducible representations of these algebras, including a generalization of the concept of aW-graph to the situation of complex reflection groups. We then use these techniques to find models for all irreducible representations in the case of complex reflection groups of dimension at most three. Using these models we are able to verify some important conjectures on the structure of Hecke algebras.

Cassels has described a pairing on the 2-Selmer group of an elliptic curve which shares some properties with the Cassels–Tate pairing. In this article, we prove that the two pairings are the same.

In this paper, we define the geometric median for a probability measure on a Riemannian manifold, give its characterization and a natural condition to ensure its uniqueness. In order to compute the geometric median in practical cases, we also propose a subgradient algorithm and prove its convergence as well as estimating the error of approximation and the rate of convergence. The convergence property of this subgradient algorithm, which is a generalization of the classical Weiszfeld algorithm in Euclidean spaces to the context of Riemannian manifolds, also improves a recent result of P. T. Fletcher et al. [NeuroImage 45 (2009) S143–S152].