Cowboy bowline Various tests of the different versions' strengths show little difference; conjecture about either knot's vulnerability to some failure remain pretty much only that – conjectures. As for the tail of a regular bowline finishing "inside the loop [ eye]", that is more a formal-image state than one of an actual knot, as the draw of the standing part will pull the tail around so that it actually points away from the eye, but there are various ways the knot can be dressed to affect this aspect. There is a rule of thumb which states that the loose end should be
Signature of a knot represented as a "2g"-by-"2g" Seifert matrix "V", formula_7. The signature of the matrix formula_8, thought of as a symmetric bilinear form, is the signature of the knot "K". Slice knots are known to have zero signature. Knot signatures can also be defined in terms of the Alexander module of the knot complement. Let formula_9 be the universal abelian cover of the knot complement. Consider the Alexander module to be the first homology group of the universal abelian cover of the knot complement: formula_10. Given a formula_11-module formula_12, let formula_13 denote the formula_11-module whose underlying formula_15-module is formula_12 but where formula_17