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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."

1 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. List of authors by pimpimpim · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I am all in favor of this, as it allows people outside scientific communities to join in with a low barrier (that is, if you happen to be a math wizard). But is, and if so, how is he going to ensure that the right people will be mentioned as co-authors in the paper?

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    molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling