An old problem, dating back to Van der Waerden, asks about counting irreducible polynomials degree $n$ polynomials with coefficients in the box [-H,H] and prescribed Galois group. Van der Waerden was the first to show that H^n+O(H^{n-\delta}) have Galois group S_n and he conjectured that the error term can be improved to o(H^{n-1}).
Recently, Bhargava almost proved van der Waerden conjecture showing that there are O(H^{n-1+\varepsilon}) non S_n extensions, while Chow and Dietmann showed that there are O(H^{n-1.017}) non S_n, non A_n extensions for n>=3 and n\neq 7,8,10.
In joint work with Lior Bary-Soroker, and Or Ben-Porath we use a result of Hilbert to prove a lower bound for the case of G=A_n, and upper and lower bounds for C_2 wreath S_{n/2} . The proof for A_n can be viewed, on the geometric side, as constructing a morphism \varphi from A^{n/2} into the variety z^2=\Delta(f) where each varphi_i is a quadratic form. For the upper bound for C_2 wreath S_{n/2} we prove a monic version of Widmer's result four counting polynomials with imprimitive Galois group.
