tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post5194463792737554423..comments2024-03-28T14:56:46.834-05:00Comments on Computational Complexity: Longest time between posing a math problem and it being answered?Lance Fortnowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06752030912874378610noreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-77165424156511292582013-09-17T03:23:53.037-05:002013-09-17T03:23:53.037-05:00:) i like this idea too!:) i like this idea too!stonehttp://bestrecumbentexercisebikes.us/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-73077304292844419172013-08-17T14:51:02.698-05:002013-08-17T14:51:02.698-05:00The problem has not been resolved if this "ou...The problem has not been resolved if this "out of the box" rPi concept is valid. It promotes a trigonometric understanding of the Pi ratio where irrational and transcendental numbers may have less influence: http://www.aitnaru.org/images/Pi_Corral.pdf<br /><br />The 62.402887364309.. degree radius is consistent in all of the designs: any circle can be squared once this angle is known (the trigonometry proves this).<br /><br />What is rPi? The geometric complement to Pi (all of the known digits of Pi can be substituted into the formula).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-38399486845900735632013-08-10T02:30:57.365-05:002013-08-10T02:30:57.365-05:00Oenopides of Chios was an ancient Greek mathematic...Oenopides of Chios was an ancient Greek mathematician and astronomer, who lived around 450 BCE. He was born shortly after 500 BCE on the island of Chios, but mostly worked in Athens.<br /><a href="http://www.starcj.com/mall/index.htm" rel="nofollow">Electronic Gadgets</a>Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10330508512955328416noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-32016005224378521392013-08-09T15:06:36.520-05:002013-08-09T15:06:36.520-05:00I made it up.I made it up.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09364120444779754928noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-5895737893639054562013-08-07T04:16:51.755-05:002013-08-07T04:16:51.755-05:00The Biblical prophet Job's (serious) question ...The Biblical prophet Job's (serious) question <b>"<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Job" rel="nofollow">Why do the righteous suffer?</a>"</b> has remained open for at least the past four millennia. <br /><br />Until recently, that is! Now David Deutsch is (seriously) proposing (in <i>The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World</i>, page 212) the simple (too simple?) STEM-centric (too STEM-centric?) answer <b><i>"<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=jZHanN5_KPgC&pg=PT337" rel="nofollow">All evils are caused by insufficient knowledge</a>"</i></b>.<br /><br />It will be interesting to see whether the 21st century's exponentiating accumulation of STEM-related knowledge results in an appreciable global reduction of suffering.<br /><br /><b>Summary</b> So far, so good! :)John Sidleshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16286860374431298556noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-40895033978994188602013-08-06T18:25:31.012-05:002013-08-06T18:25:31.012-05:00The twin prime conjecture is not due to Euclid. S...The twin prime conjecture is not due to Euclid. See<br /><br />http://mathoverflow.net/questions/7639/twin-prime-conjecture-reference<br /><br />One could perhaps argue that the question of whether there exist any odd perfect numbers is implicit in Euclid, but he doesn't pose this question explicitly.Timothy Chowhttp://alum.mit.edu/www/tchownoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-67865298701640749072013-08-06T11:24:00.597-05:002013-08-06T11:24:00.597-05:00I'm curious- its ficitional in that YOU made i...I'm curious- its ficitional in that YOU made it up,<br />or its a legend that, while false, is... out there and<br />the reason for the statue?GASARCHhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06134382469361359081noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-54951955348020693452013-08-05T22:16:08.868-05:002013-08-05T22:16:08.868-05:00:) i like this idea!:) i like this idea!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-81912448799595608512013-08-05T21:30:48.722-05:002013-08-05T21:30:48.722-05:00The oldest problem is consistency. It was first st...The oldest problem is consistency. It was first studied in ancient Mesopotamia, by a Sumerian whose name we do not know. Yet strangely, we know how he looked like. He pondered the question many a day, the entire time sitting on his chair. This fellow was the first royal scribe. He considered himself lucky, he was fast and good with numbers. No one knew of a better scribe. He considered his talent a gift, which allowed him a comfortable life and many luxuries. But he now saw it was also a curse.<br /><br />Some sunrises ago, his liege and employer asked him to make a count of all the wealth stored in the royal vault, which was comprised of various artifacts and valuables. You see, his liege believed he was the wealthiest man in the world and he wanted to prove it, by measuring his wealth. <br /><br />For days the scribe and his assistants had counted, making a list of everything in the vault. Then he sat down and multiplied the quantities of everything with their value and then summed it all up, covering a vast amount of tablets with his scribblings. The final amount was extraordinary, never he had written down such a big number. He thought his liege would be much pleased. So he wrote the result all nice and formal in a royal report and presented it to his liege, hoping for a great reward for his endeavors. He did not get was he was expecting. You see, when he presented the report to his lord, the lord sat skeptical and said:<br /><br />"Very well. But are you sure you have not made a mistake?"<br /><br />The scribe described how he and his assistants calculated for days. He did every operation twice when multiplying and summing, just to be sure. But his lord did not understand mathematics and so he said to him:<br /><br />" But are you certain those... calculations of yours are correct? If your methods are false, I shall be ridiculed by all. Begone and do not come back until you can show me that this amount is correct."<br /><br />The scribe, a noble himself, as his father, knew very well the punishment for disobeying his lord. So he sat in his chair and pondered. He thought for days of how proving his multiplications and additions were correct, but thought as he may, he could not find a solution. He perished in that very chair, by starvation and worry. We may never learn his name, but he was forever immortalized by a sculptor of that court, who was fascinated by the mathematician who stood there, for days, pondering his seemingly inescapable situation.<br /><br />[The thinking scribe: http://cache2.allpostersimages.com/p/LRG/37/3795/9DIIF00Z/posters/statue-of-a-sumerian-scribe.jpg]<br /><br />His replacement was his assistant, a good scribe, but he lacked the talent of his master for calculations. However, what he lacked in talent, he replaced with wit. For you see, when the lord asked him for an answer to the same question, the young scribe said:<br /><br />"We asked the oracle for an omen, my Lord. The Gods confirm everything is in order and this is your true wealth."<br /><br />[The above story is of course, fictional.]<br /><br /><br /><br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09364120444779754928noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-14171907971502492392013-08-05T17:45:08.717-05:002013-08-05T17:45:08.717-05:00ps in this blog post I ponder the difficulty of P ...ps in this <a href="http://vzn1.wordpress.com/2012/10/18/math-monster/" rel="nofollow">blog post</a> I ponder the difficulty of P vs NP in a historical context and compare it to scaling olympus mons on mars in contrast/juxtaposition to scaling Everest on earth.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10048739391910999672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-30177426961054546672013-08-05T17:41:24.279-05:002013-08-05T17:41:24.279-05:00the question of the existence of odd perfect numbe...the question of the existence of odd perfect numbers is also due to the greeks/euclid. basically number theory & diophantine eqns are the oldest problems. the inherent difficulty of many of them is apparently related to the undecidability phenomenon as in the matijasevich-davis-robbins-putnam proof.<br />re twin primes note theres been a recent breakthrough by zhang covered in many places.<br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10048739391910999672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-90868613262194692502013-08-05T17:25:24.683-05:002013-08-05T17:25:24.683-05:00How old is the question of whether there is an odd...How old is the question of whether there is an odd perfect number?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-56264688745490534842013-08-05T14:12:49.666-05:002013-08-05T14:12:49.666-05:00Fixed.
Another very old open problem-design a spe...Fixed.<br />Another very old open problem-design a spell checker that is smarter than<br />its user in terms of proper names.GASARCHhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06134382469361359081noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-74867325541056394552013-08-05T14:00:30.257-05:002013-08-05T14:00:30.257-05:00It's actually Lindemann not Lindermann (withou...It's actually Lindemann not Lindermann (without the 'r'). But that doesn't really matter, I guess.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-50073713297659108542013-08-05T13:50:51.283-05:002013-08-05T13:50:51.283-05:00Garth: it seems like squaring the circle is older ...Garth: it seems like squaring the circle is older by around 200 years<br />(though we may find that people before Euclid posed Parallel Postulate<br />and have to revise this) but clearly Parallel Postulate is more important.<br /><br />Jeff: WOW- complexity of Mult still open! <br /><br />Yury: Once Twin Primes is solved we'll prob have a new winner of<br />the open-the-longest-but-solved contest, unless Mult ever gets solved.GASARCHhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06134382469361359081noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-28001503617236389132013-08-05T13:39:18.768-05:002013-08-05T13:39:18.768-05:00The twin prime conjecture has been open for approx...The twin prime conjecture has been open for approximately 2300 years (the conjecture was made by Euclid around 300 BCE).Yurynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-47730242607677161392013-08-05T12:44:05.116-05:002013-08-05T12:44:05.116-05:00People have been searching for the best way to mul...People have been searching for the best way to multiply integers since the then-1500-year-old document the Rhind Papyrus was a copy of was written. We still don't know, all of written human history later.JeffEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17633745186684887140noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-80285512770266774352013-08-05T10:44:46.228-05:002013-08-05T10:44:46.228-05:00The problem of the parallel postulate (in modern t...The problem of the parallel postulate (in modern terms, to prove it from the other axioms of geometry, or to prove it independent of them) must be of similar age. Euclid seems to have been aware of the problem c. 300 BC (he avoids using his 5th axiom if at all possible), and it was solved in 1868 by Beltrami.Gareth Reeshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15405124248006286547noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-57663913577839619132013-08-05T10:16:23.595-05:002013-08-05T10:16:23.595-05:00I have fixed it - thanks. I did 1882-500 instead o...I have fixed it - thanks. I did 1882-500 instead of 1882+500.<br />GASARCHhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06134382469361359081noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-37156008723597682922013-08-05T10:09:05.813-05:002013-08-05T10:09:05.813-05:00If the problem was posed in 500 BC and proven impo...If the problem was posed in 500 BC and proven impossible in 1882 AD, wouldn't it be open for 500 + 1882 = 2382 years, much greater than the 1300 years you claim above?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com