Wikipedia-sized maths problem cut down to size

• Autores: Jacob Aron
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3041, 2015, pág. 14
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • A Maths problem previously tackled with the help of a computer, which produced a monster proof the size of Wikipedia, has now been made manageable by a human. Although it is unlikely to have practical applications, the result highlights the differences between two modem approaches to mathematics: crowdsourcing and computers. Terence Tao of the University of California, Los Angeles, has published a proof of Paul Erdos' discrepancy problem, a puzzle about the properties of an infinite, random sequence of +1s and -1s. Last year, Alexei Lisitsa and Boris Konev of the University of Liverpool used a computer to prove that the discrepancy will always be larger than two. The resulting proof was a 13 gigabyte file that no human could hope to check. Tao, with the aid of crowdsourcing, has used more traditional mathematics to prove that Erdos was right: the discrepancy is infinite no matter what sequence one chooses.