Yosemite bowline form a highly dangerous slip knot. Additional safety is achieved by tying with a tail (see below). When finished, the working end forms a figure eight. Because of the danger of incorrectly tying the Yosemite bowline, it may be safer and less error-prone to use a standard or double bowline with a backup stopper knot added to the tail, such as a double overhand knot tied around the loop. The Yosemite finish can be applied to other bowline variants, such as the double bowline. While the knot's versatility suggests it as a convenient tie-in for attaching a climbing rope to
Signature of a knot formula_11. This form takes value in the rational polynomials whose denominators are the Alexander polynomial of the knot, which as a formula_11-module is isomorphic to formula_34. Let formula_35 be any linear function which is invariant under the involution formula_36, then composing it with the sesquilinear duality pairing gives a symmetric bilinear form on formula_37 whose signature is an invariant of the knot. All such signatures are concordance invariants, so all signatures of slice knots are zero. The sesquilinear duality pairing respects the prime-power decomposition of formula_37—i.e.: the prime power decomposition gives an orthogonal decomposition of formula_39. Cherry Kearton has shown