On congruences for the traces of powers of some matrices

In a series of recent papers, V.I. Arnold studied many questions concerning the statistics and dynamics of powers of elements in algebraic systems. In particular, on the basis of experimental data, he proposed an Euler-type congruence for the traces of powers of integer matrices as a conjecture. The proof of this conjecture was deduced from the author's theorem (obtained at the end of 2004) on congruences for the traces of powers of elements in number fields. Recently, it turned out that there also exist other approaches to congruences for the traces of powers of integer matrices. In the present paper, the author's results of 2004 are strengthened and a survey of their relations to number theory, theory of dynamical systems, combinatorics, and p-adic analysis is given. The main conclusion of this survey is that all approaches considered here ultimately reflect different points of view on a certain simple but important phenomenon in mathematics.