We report the results of a simulation study in which we explore the joint effect of group absorptive capacity (as the average individual rationality of the group members) and cognitive distance (as the distance between the most rational group member and the rest of the group) on the emergence of collective rationality in groups. We start from empirical results reported in the literature on grou...

A hyperelliptic function field can be always be represented as a real quadratic extension of the rational function field. If at least one of the rational prime divisors is rational over the field of constants, then it also can be represented as an imaginary quadratic extension of the rational function field. The arithmetic in the divisor class group can be realized in the second case by Cantor’...

We prove that when all hyperelliptic curves of genus n ≥ 1 having a rational Weierstrass point are ordered by height, the average size of the 2-Selmer group of their Jacobians is equal to 3. It follows that (the limsup of) the average rank of the Mordell-Weil group of their Jacobians is at most 3/2. The method of Chabauty can then be used to obtain an effective bound on the number of rational p...

We formalize and study several competing notions of versality for an action of a linear algebraic group on an algebraic variety X. Our main result is that these notions of versality are equivalent to various statements concerning rational points on twisted forms of X (existence of rational points, existence of a dense set of rational points, etc.) We give applications of this equivalence in bot...