MANY CLASSICAL KNOT INVARIANTS ARE NOT VASSILIEV INVARIANTS

Abstract

We show that under twisting, a Vassiliev invariant of order n behaves like a polynomial of degree at most n. This greatly restricts the values that a Vassiliev invariant can take, for example, on the (2, m) torus knots. In particular, this implies that many classical numerical knot invariants such as the signature, genus, bridge number, crossing number, and unknotting number are not Vassiliev invariants.