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Massive Open Collaboration In Math Declared a Success

Posted by timothy on from the you-count-the-feet-we'll-count-the-toes dept.

nanopolitan writes "In late January, Tim Gowers, a Fields Medal winner at Cambridge University, used his blog for an experiment in massive online collaboration for solving a significant problem in math — combinatorial proof of the density Hales-Jewett theorem. Some six weeks (and nearly 1000 comments) later, Gowers has declared the project a success, and some of the ideas have already been written up as a preprint."

2 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. Massive open collaboration in math by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 5, Funny

    I wonder if you could do massive open collaboration for software? You could probably write an OS kernel, maybe even an entire operating system!

    --
    My blog
  2. Prior Art by D+Ninja · · Score: 3, Funny

    I totally tried "Massive Open Collaboration" on my homework and tests in high school. I most definitely came up with this idea first.

    And, no, I still don't understand basic algebra? Why do you ask?