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More on Riemann Hypothesis

Anonymous Coward writes "The NYTimes has a little story on a recent conference at New York University's Courant Institute where mathematicians gathered to discuss potential attacks on the Riemann hypothesis. The Clay Mathematics Institute had announced an award of a million dollars for a proof (or refutation) of the Riemann hypothesis during the millenial celebrations. That million dollars won't be worth much if it takes as long as that Last Theorem by Fermat to solve. There were some interesting observations such as the statistical distribution of the zeros looked just like calculations on the energy levels of large atoms." We did a related story on hard math problems two years ago.

13 of 234 comments (clear)

  1. Not more attacks! by Torgo's+Pizza · · Score: 4, Funny

    We're already being searched at airports, now mathematicians can't carry a protractor or a compass without being looked as being suspicious. When will terrorists learn that attacking math problems never solves anything. Wait, maybe it does...

  2. Eureka! by Ass-Gas-Istan · · Score: 4, Funny

    I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this post is too small to contain.

    1. Re:Eureka! by Nightpaw · · Score: 4, Funny

      It was that fucking lameness filter, wasn't it?

  3. But it's easy to prove... by bearnol · · Score: 3, Funny

    http://www.bearnol.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Math/riema nn.htm

  4. When I finsh my Linux Xbox port by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny
    After I finish my Linux Xbox port, I'll solve the Riemann Hypothesis. That will give me:
    $200,000 + $1,000,000 = $1,200,000
    I'll be well on my way to my second million!
  5. Other things anyone who really knows can do.... by DohDamit · · Score: 3, Funny

    Explain sight to the blind.
    Explain sound to the deaf.
    Explain intuitive leaps of any kind.

    Not every concept maps to a clean explanation in a few simple words. That's why we have the different words. True, most concepts can be mapped somewhat to common language, but come on...give the guy a fucking break. We're talking about advanced mathematics.

    Get off YOUR high horse, bubby.

  6. A proof that is worth millions to MAN kind by mustangdavis · · Score: 2, Funny
    Here is a proof that has eluded many men throughout their life time.
    Keep in mind this proof looks much better if you can actually use the square root symbol

    The problem:

    Prove that women are all evil.

    (With written proof, men don't have to worry about women arguing this fact anymore ... just show them the paper. This will end debates that have been going on for centuries)


    The proof:

    Given that:
    • Time = money (we all know this)
    • Women = time * money (another well known fact)
    • Money = sqrt(evil) (after all, money is the root of all evil)


    Proceede with the proof:
    1. Women = money * money (substitution)
    2. Women = money^2 (restating #1)
    3. Women = ( sqrt(evil) )^2 (substitution)
    4. Women = evil
    5. Q.E.D.


    See what an undergrad in Mathematics, an undergrad in C.S., and a Master's in C.S. gets you .... the ability to prove what you already know to be true!! What a waste of time!!! And that time cost me money!! So I got screwed twice!!! (and not by women in this case) I suppose this proof would also apply to college as well as women (since college = time * money). In fact, I just proved another well known fact .... college = women!!! And since college = women, it follows that college = evil as well. Wow, I never proved this much good stuff while in school! Practical theory!!!!

    Seriously, I wish someone could prove that P=NP. I hated graduate Algorithms! This would have eliminated a portion of my least favorite topic in that course (NP and NP-completeness). If this world is not truely hell, someone will prove that and share it to help prevent the suffering of innocent C.S. graduate students.

  7. I am confident... by Rocky · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...that these proofs will not be solved using conventional methods, but they will eventually be solved using SMALL PROGRAMS with SIMPLE RULES. These rules can be run on a simple computer using my program, Mathematica. Easy!

    Either that, or you can solve them by buying REAL ESTATE with NO MONEY DOWN! or by placing SMALL ADS in NEWSPAPERS with your own 900 NUMBER!!!!!

    --
    "I'm an old-fashioned type of guy. I worship the Sun and Moon as gods. And fear them."
  8. Good intro... by ImaLamer · · Score: 5, Funny

    "that God -- with whom he waged a very personal war -- would not let Hardy die with such glory."

    That has to be the funniest things I've read, today.

    Is it me or does it seem that all "hard" mathematicians are either at war with God or trying to "refute"/"prove"/divide/discover/humiliate him/her/it/Taco?

  9. You can't stop these attacks by capt.Hij · · Score: 5, Funny
    The problem is that these mathematical terrorists form small cells (usually located near institutions of "higher education") which are extremely difficult to penetrate. It usually requires connections made early during college and 4-5 years after that. Some people have been known to take much longer.

    Even if you are able to get into a cell it can be extremely difficult to stay in and keep your sanity. Many people who do get in just sort of drift off from society and are all but lost. Those few that make it often end up working alone, late at night in the back of dimly lit coffee houses.

    There is simply no way to stop someone who is willing to make such sacrifices.

  10. Those Damn terrorists... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Now we have to worry about "potential attacks on the Riemann hypothesis" during the holidays...

  11. Re:Why so much money? by Eminor · · Score: 2, Funny

    Or maybe they are targetting all the rich quants who were just laid off On Wall Street.


    You'd think they would target people who are good at math.

  12. Some more math humor . . . by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Once upon a time (1/t), pretty little Polly Nomial was strolling across a field of vectors when she came to the edge of a singularly large matrix.

    Now Polly was convergent and her mother had made it an absolute condition that she must never enter such an array without her brackets on. Polly, however, who had changed her variables that morning and was feeling particularly badly behaved, ignored this condition on the grounds that it was insufficient, and made her way in amongst the complex elements.

    Rows and columns enveloped her on all sides. Tangents approached her surface. She became tensor and tensor. Suddenly two branches of a hyperbola touched her at a single point. She oscillated violently, lost all sense of direction, and went completely divergent. As she reached a turning point she tripped over a square root that was protruding from the erf, and she plunged headlong down a steep gradient. When she was differentiated once more, she found herself, apparently alone, in a non-Euclidean space.

    She was being watched, however. That smooth operator, Curly Pi, was lurking inner product. As he numerically analyzed her, his eyes devoured her curvilinear coordinates, and a singular expression crossed his face. Was she still convergent, he wondered. He decided to integrate improperly at once.

    Hearing a common fraction behind her, Polly rotated and saw Curly approaching her with his power series expanding. She could see by his degenerate conic that he was up to no good.

    "What a symmetric little polynomial you are," he said. "I can see that your angles have lots of secs."

    "Oh sir," she protested, "keep away from me. I haven't got my brackets on."

    "Calm yourself, my dear", said our suave operator. "Your fears are purely imaginary."

    "I, i," she thought. "Perhaps he's homogeneous."

    "What order are you?" the brute demanded.

    "Seventeen," replied Polly.

    "I suppose you've never been operated on?"

    "Of course not," Polly cried indignantly. "I'm absolutely convergent."

    "Come, come," said Curly. "Let's go off to a decimal place, and I'll take you to the limit!"

    "Never!" gasped Polly.

    "Abscissa!" he swore, using the vilest oath he knew. His patience was gone. Coshing her over the head with a log until she was powerless, Curly removed her discontinuities. He stared at her significant places and began smoothing her points of inflection. Poor Polly. She felt his hand tending to her asymptotic limit. Her convergence would soon be gone forever.

    There was no mercy, for Curly was a heavyside operator. Curly's radius squared itself. Polly's loci quivered. He integrated by parts. He integrated by partial fractions. After he cofactored, he performed Runge-Kutta on her. The complex beast even went all the way around and did a contour integration. Curly went on operating until he satisfied her hypothesis, then he exponentiated and became completely orthogonal.

    When Polly got home that night her mother noticed that she was no longer piecewise continuous, but had been truncated in several places. As the months went by, Polly's denominator increased monotonically. Finally she went to l'Hospital and generated a small but pathological function which left little surds all over the place and drove Polly to deviation.

    The moral of the story is, "If you want to keep your expressions convergent, never allow them a single degree of freedom."