In mathematics, the value distribution theory of holomorphic functions is a division of mathematical analysis. It tries to get quantitative measures of the number of times a function f(z) assumes a value a, as z grows in size, refining the Picard theorem on behaviour close to an essential singularity. The theory exists for analytic functions (and meromorphic functions) of one complex variable z, or of several complex variables.
In the case of one variable the term Nevanlinna theory, after Rolf Nevanlinna, is also common. The now-classical theory received renewed interest, when Paul Vojta suggested some analogies with the problem of integral solutions to Diophantine equations. These turned out to involve some close parallels, and to lead to fresh points of view on the Mordell conjecture and related questions.
Famous quotes containing the words distribution, theory and/or functions:
“The man who pretends that the distribution of income in this country reflects the distribution of ability or character is an ignoramus. The man who says that it could by any possible political device be made to do so is an unpractical visionary. But the man who says that it ought to do so is something worse than an ignoramous and more disastrous than a visionary: he is, in the profoundest Scriptural sense of the word, a fool.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“... the first reason for psychology’s failure to understand what people are and how they act, is that clinicians and psychiatrists, who are generally the theoreticians on these matters, have essentially made up myths without any evidence to support them; the second reason for psychology’s failure is that personality theory has looked for inner traits when it should have been looking for social context.”
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“The English masses are lovable: they are kind, decent, tolerant, practical and not stupid. The tragedy is that there are too many of them, and that they are aimless, having outgrown the servile functions for which they were encouraged to multiply. One day these huge crowds will have to seize power because there will be nothing else for them to do, and yet they neither demand power nor are ready to make use of it; they will learn only to be bored in a new way.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)