Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Another Approach to P ≠ NP

Last week's Numb3rs episode "Mind Games" centered on a purported psychic causing the mathematician Charlie Eppes to exclaim "Let's all sit down at the Ouija Board and try to solve P versus NP once and for all."

5 comments:

  1. Worst episode of NUMB3RS ever.
    The P vs NP crack was good, but
    the episode never disproved the psychic
    or said how he did some of what he did.
    I expect better from one of the most
    intelligent shows on the air.
    (Then again, they did claim that from
    a proof of Rieman's hyp you can crack
    the internet, so maybe I expect too much.)

    bill gasarch

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  2. I thought the use of oracles just showed some techniques won't work :-).
    Gilad.

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  3. Made me laugh out loud. Then I had to spend 5 minutes explaining to my wife why it was funny.
    --john dougan

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  4. My favorite Numb3rs moment was when the mathematician's non-mathematician brother refered to it as "P vs. P." He was then corrected by the mathematician... "*N* P". It was a nice slice of life moment.

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  5. The internet has few problems, so P ? NP is meaningless

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