A story of the rise and fall of a serious attempt at a proof that P!=NP

http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2009/08/20/what-will-happen-when-pnp-is-proved/

by amichail • 17 years ago

28 11 17 years ago

rjlipton.wordpress.com

Hmmm, I wonder how word got out about the proof. That seems to be the big issue.

anshul• 17 years ago

Pure mathematicians generally do not like secrecy. It would be just too childish to keep such a word to oneself. They also know well to not assume the result as proved until a refereed journal confirms it. All that would have happened if the word got out to NYT would be a PR mess about which the mathematical community couldn't care less.

corecirculator• 17 years ago

Isn't it generalizing too much? Andrew Wiles worked on Fermat's last theorem for 7 yrs in secret, nobody even knew he was working on it until he published the results.

jsomers• 17 years ago

That seems true in general, but it's still dangerous to declare that you're working on a famous problem (P!=NP, 3n+1, Riemann); it's something you keep to yourself until you've made serious progress.

endtime3• 17 years ago

A bit tangential, but...

>What is the fewest number of colors sufficient for coloring the plane so that no two points with the same color are a unit distance apart?

For a given point P, aren't there an infinite number of points that are a given distance from P? I.e. the points that correspond to a unit circle with origin at P are all that unit distance from P. What am I missing here?

sp332• 17 years ago

Longer explanation, with pictures: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadwiger%E2%80%93Nelson_problem

endtime3• 17 years ago

Thanks, but as far as I can tell that still doesn't actually answer my question.

tjic• 17 years ago

Fascinating.

Conventional wisdom to the contrary, it's always neat to see how sausage is made.

This is why folks love police procedurals and forensics TV shows ... and its extra fun when the topic is math.

A story of the rise and fall of a serious attempt at a proof that P!=NP

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