Notes on Andrew Granville's Number Theory: A Masterclass

I was very excited when I purchased Andrew Granville's Number Theory: A Masterclass.  

I had read his graphic novel Prime Suspects and felt overwhelmed.  The main insight presented in the graphic novel, a surprisingly relationship between two very different mathematical ideas, was beyond me.  I encourage anyone interested to purchase the book and give it a try.  I figured that reading through the masterclass would not only deepen my understanding of number theory but also give me a better context for rereading Prime Suspects.

As I read the preface and skimmed through the chapters, I realized that the book was more well-thought out and better organized than I had expected.  I was very impressed that he had taken Gauss's Disquisitiones Arithemticae as the inspiration for his effort.  I am especially excited that he has planned a future book that will provide a walkthrough of Gauss's classic work.

To motivate myself to go through the book slowly and carefully, I decided to start this blog.  The purpose of this blog is to share with anyone interested my efforts at working through the "obvious" ideas and exercises (by "obvious", I mean ideas that are presented as straight forward to work through but which often provide insights to the non-expert)

While I love math, I have learned that I make numerous mistakes.  Often, there are gaps in my argument which are not obvious to me.  I am very open to corrections posted as comments.

It is my hope that others who are fortunate enough to get a copy of Granville's book can use this blog to help them if they have any difficulties with any exercises that I was able to make progress on and hopefully, some will be able to help me when I have problems with an exercise or where I unknowingly make a mistake.