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Prominent Mathematicians Rebuke Recent Riemann Hypothesis Proof
Bryan writes "Xian-Jin Li's purported proof of the Riemann Hypothesis (reported on recently) has been rebuked by Fields Medalist Terence Tao. Fortunately, Dr. Li's proof fails alongside a respectable graveyard of previous attempts." Relatedly, jim.shilliday writes "The proof cites and appears to be based in part on the work of the leading French theorist Alain Connes. A few hours ago, Connes posted a comment on his blog stating that the purported proof is so badly flawed that he stopped reading it."
From the summary:
Fortunately, Dr. Li's proof fails alongside a respectable graveyard of previous attempts
Why? I'm probably missing something obvious, I'm not even a mathematician to start with, but...
I mean, we (the world) do want to prove it right (or wrong) one day or another, don't we?
I have to ask, I know for mathematicians this is a big deal and all, but what are the piratical applications for this?
-Ours is the wisdom of Solomon, the magic of Merlyn, the fall of Icaris.
Not just refuted, but rebuked!
The "proof" is that of Theorem 7.3 page 29 in Li's paper, but I stopped reading it when I saw that he is extending the test function h from ideles to adeles by 0 outside ideles and then using Fourier transform (see page 31). This cannot work and ideles form a set of measure 0 inside adeles (unlike what happens when one only deals with finitely many places).
The proof, and the rebuke, only proved my theory that there is a distinct surge in advil usage when something like this is posted on /. or digged.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
Well duh this is what we have been saying - this is a preprint and is likely to have errors. Whether or not they can be repaired is open to question.
Wiles' proof of Fermat's last theorem took a long time to go through the review and repair process. And there was at least one pretty hard problem that had to be fixed.
Slashdot's "journalistic" process really suxors when it comes to this sort of stuff.
you got pawned
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification
Oh come on, you were almost there! How about:
"Renowned Researchers Rebuke Recent Riemann Reasoning"
You're not making yourself look good here. Read the entire proof and then critique it objectively, rather than just insult the proof and the mathematician behind it. That would be taking the high road. Remember, you haven't proven this conjecture either yet.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The "proof" contained so many errors that a previously uncontacted amazon tribe could have debunked it.
My husband is a mathematician, and he gets emails weekly from crackpots claiming to have disproved the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem or having proven the Riemann hypothesis or whatever. You can submit anything to the ArXiv, this shouldn't have even been news in the first place until it was confirmed.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Did Dr. Li _really_ believe he had a solid proof on his hands or simply publishing bullshit in the hopes of...no verification? 15 minutes of fame? Some things we will never know.
Just wanted to point out that Professor Connes is also a Fields medalist (1982).
I guess it is a testament to Xian-Jin Li excellent reputation and the importance of the topic that these two mathematical superstars took the time to look at his proof.
The proof was a legitimate effort by a non-crackpot, but the ideas in it were well known to specialists in the field and were generally understood to not be powerful enough to crack the problem. So the errors were found fairly quickly. Scott Aaronson's post Ten Signs that a claimed mathematical breakthrough is wrong item #10 may be helpful in understanding what happened.
"Connes posted a comment on his blog stating that the purported proof is so badly flawed that he stopped reading it."
Yes, yes.. I stopped reading it for the same reason.
Yes it will. It's electric.
"Rebuke"is not a technical word and is certainly not what happened.
The whole thing was a bit more polite than the way it has been descibed here - as anyone who follows the link will find, at least.
Who modded the parent "Troll"? I disagree with the parent, but I see absolutely no reason to call him "troll". I think people tend to assume bad faith, even when good faith is possible and often the most likely possibility.
Mathemathicians == Super mathematicians ?
"Oh, tough talk for someone with only one Fields medal!" -- Wernstrom (to Farnsworth)
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
me too.
Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do. - Jean-Paul Sartre
Actually, factoring prime numbers is not NP complete, as it has already been proven to be in P on Quantum computers. So, if factoring were NP-complete, then we could very happily say that P=NP.
Li's already posted revisions since the original two that were up when this first appeared here. I wonder if those being critical have read the most recent version.
Yeah, this is becoming a real problem with the preprint journals. Media groups like New Scientist will run a hyped-up story on some "ground-breaking new development" which will have propagated through the blog echo-chamber before other scientists have even had a chance to review it. It's not enough for the media to completely butcher the science they do present, now they have to present results which haven't even had cursory review. It's no wonder the public doesn't trust science considering what is is being presented to them.
It also creates unnecessary drama within the science community by means of the Leonardo DiCaprio affect - the more people hype a star the more everyone else hates them. The author of these papers are usually legitimate scientists who just made an honest mistake, whose only crime was submitting their preprint to ArXiv just like thousands of other scientists. But now they are suddenly being framed as "genius underdog" / "cocky attention whore" by the media and scientists.
The only reason that the preprint journals exist is as a loophole to get around normal journals posting rules. I'm really hoping that preprint journals will fade away as more reviewed papers are published for free X months after their journal publication date.
I think Connes was refuting the proof which is a more neutral term than rebuke (which means telling off).
Interestingly enough, this rebuke has also disproved what is known as the "Reindeer Effect"
Particle Physicist: There is either a black sheep in Scotland or there is a stationary black sheep somewhere but I cannot say with certainty that there is a stationary black sheep in Scotland and, for that matter, I'm not really sure Scotland exists.
Biologist: A sheep in Scotland is expressing the "black" phenotype.
Geneticist: Color? Boring, solved problem. Ask me why he is antisocial.
Evolutionary Geneticist: I know why there are black sheep.
Creationist: No he doesn't!
Philosopher: They're both right.
Computer Scientist: black_sheep++
C Programmer: q++
Perl Programmer: $_[$&]++
PHP Programmer: I'm busy looking for how to increase count of variable by one, but haven't found the answer on Google, and will eventually use a system call to execute the Perl guy's solution*
Liberal Arts Major: Its a sheep of color, people.
* You would laugh less at this if *you* were the guy trying to read through and analyze 125 pages of outsourced PHP which uses this "solution" 30 times, invariably calling code that has already been used for Perl golf practice, with sparse comments written only in Japanese.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
According to Wikipedia "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-body_problem"
There is a solution to th n-body case, but it converges very slowly and is impractical to use.
I read some of the comments after I posted my first comment. I particularly point out one where the one who posted claims to be working partime for a Mathematical Journal. His comments that a Crank sents one page material on a weekly basis. He may be a crank but I don't subscribe to the fact that one page paper writen in some format is always a requirement for Mathematical publication. It implies that a person who does the hard part of the work also has to have the skill of a 'glorified stenographer or Secratary' to make his or her work published for others to scrutny. Such comments are illfounded. A page or many pages doesn't make any difference to me as long as the contents are valueble. Mathew Cherian
Please check on httpp://www.riemann.co.in for my proof for Riemann Hypothesis. I believe it has meaning in the Engineering and Physical Sciences. May be some times in the Bhor Atomic Models etc; It is for other field specialists to figure out how this phenomenon is associated with their field. Mathew Cherian