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Two additional notes: 1. Zhang posted an attempt at solving this problem in 2007 that he later more or less admitted was flawed: https://mathoverflow.net/questions/131221/yitang-zhangs-2007... . But speaking with mathematicians who are intimately familiar with Zhang's previous work, there seems to be good reason to be optimistic nevertheless. First, the idea behind Zhang's proof is similar to the zero-repulsion ideas…
Hardy may have a point, on average. And it’s probably because of the responsibilities factor, i.e. older people have kids, families, departments to run, etc that takes them out of the game. If I did math with this level of intensity I would not have time for both without a partner willing to make quite some sacrifices.
That house price appreciation must just be that good.
(Also, it was reported he "worked at a Subway" but IIRC he was actually the accountant for a friend's Subway franchise.)
Is there a real world outcome to this result?
I think it's fair to say that this could lead to certain new things becoming known about the distribution of primes. This could have implications for cryptographic algorithms that depend on prime numbers being hard to find.
Some crypto (namely, RSA) depends on on composite numbers being hard to factor, which is a different problem.
There was a scientist who did his best stuff while he was working as a patent clerk.
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Someone needs to make a movie about his life, or at least a documentary.
Good luck finding a movie about Isaac Newton or Einstein, or literally anyone whose value to the world is more than pretending to be someone else or lying a lot, let alone a very interesting mathematician no one recognizes. (Ok I know there’s a few movies about folks like Turing and Nash, but it’s pretty slim pickings).
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Plenty of counterexamples to the claim https://mathoverflow.net/questions/25630/major-mathematical-...
Just curious how many examples that show FIRST major discovery after say 40? I think I spotted a few.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20170328-statistician-proves-...
Can someone explain the decimal constants that are used throughout the proof? For example, on page 52. It's rare to see these kinds of numbers used in mathematical proofs, but I'm sure they were chosen for good reasons.
The sad part is that as the trend continues we may reach a point where a mathematician's intellectually productive life is not sufficient to contribute anything novel, statistically speaking. And as population seems to be close to peaking, we will also have less chances of exploring the extremes of mathematical dexterity.
Perhaps we could then rely on computer assisted theorem provers. Or life extension, as long as intellectually productive years are also increased. Or we will need to focus and specialize kids earlier on.
Is there a real world outcome to this result?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a documentary, but I can't attest to its quality (I haven't watched it yet): http://www.zalafilms.com/films/countingabout.html .
Hmm... thanks, it looks quite good. But why is streaming rental for 24 hours? Why can't we do rentals for two weeks for videos? Is there a good reason to make it so difficult to stream? I don't want to watch it a million times. I just want to make it through once, but it takes me several sittings typically to finish a movie.