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Elusive Proof, Elusive Prover: A New Mathematical Mystery - New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...15math.html math proof emotion conjecture
shared by anonymous on 17 Jan 11 - Cached
  • anonymous on 17 Jan 11
     
    "Grisha Perelman, where are you? Three years ago, a Russian mathematician by the name of Grigory Perelman, a k a Grisha, in St. Petersburg, announced that he had solved a famous and intractable mathematical problem, known as the Poincaré conjecture, about the nature of space. After posting a few short papers on the Internet and making a whirlwind lecture tour of the United States, Dr. Perelman disappeared back into the Russian woods in the spring of 2003, leaving the world's mathematicians to pick up the pieces and decide if he was right. Now they say they have finished his work, and the evidence is circulating among scholars in the form of three book-length papers with about 1,000 pages of dense mathematics and prose between them. As a result there is a growing feeling, a cautious optimism that they have finally achieved a landmark not just of mathematics, but of human thought."
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Debate Over P vs. NP Proof Highlights Web Collaboration - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...17proof.html
shared by anonymous on 17 Aug 10 - Cached
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 17 Aug 10
       
      Here is the "So what?" component of this issue. Your next online purchase might not be as secure as the website says it is if P does equal NP.
  • The proof required the piecing together of principles from multiple areas within mathematics. The major effort in constructing this proof was uncovering a chain of conceptual links between various fields and viewing them through a common lens.”
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 17 Aug 10
       
      Further evidence that expertise in various fields are necessary to solve future problems.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • alleged proofs
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 17 Aug 10
       
      Careful choice of language.
  • “At this point the consensus is that there are large holes in the alleged proof — in fact, large enough that people do not consider the alleged proof to be a proof,” Dr. Vardi said. “I think Deolalikar got his 15 minutes of fame, but at this point the excitement has subsided and the skepticism is turning into negative conviction.”
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 17 Aug 10
       
      More on the language of proof and what is required to achieve that term "proof."
  • This kind of collaboration has emerged only in recent years in the math and computer science communities. In the past, intense discussions like the one that surrounded the proof of the Poincaré conjecture were carried about via private e-mail and distribution lists as well as in the pages of traditional paper-based science journals.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 17 Aug 10
       
      How the scientific and mathematical communities communicate and vet theories is changing.
  • Clay Shirky, a professor of interactive telecommunications at New York University, argues that the emergence of these new collaborative tools is paving the way for a second scientific revolution in the same way the printing press created a demarcation between the age of alchemy and the age of chemistry.
  • Passions have run high. A computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Scott Aaronson, literally bet his house last week — $200,000 — that the Deolalikar paper would be proved incorrect: “If Vinay Deolalikar is awarded the $1,000,000 Clay Millennium Prize for his proof of P-NP, then I, Scott Aaronson, will personally supplement his prize by the amount of $200,000.”
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 17 Aug 10
       
      Even MIT mathematicians are passionate!!! Don't assume there is no emotion in mathematics.
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