Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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. Re:Massive? by retchdog · · Score: 1, Troll

    So a guy had a problem to solve, and batted some ideas back-and-forth amongst a few of his mates. Why is this newsworthy?

    Well, a group of mathematicians from different institutions formed and managed, within a few weeks, to stop grandstanding for long enough to accomplish and exceed a pre-determined goal. This is somewhat remarkable.

    --
    "They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky