Feynman on Fermat's Last Theorem • Hacker News Board

Re: Feynman on Fermat's Last Theorem

#111

Post by ethan_g » Sun, Jul 03, 2016, 10:28 PM UTC

Apologies to rain on the parade, but this sort of argument is very well known and commonly used in number theory. Since these techniques don't lead to proofs, they may not get as much attention in standard math education, but they are still well-known. Many number theory papers use this technique (often with more refinements) to estimate the number of expected solutions. I would be stunned if it wasn't used on Fermat's last theorem long before Feynman did.

For an exposition on some heuristics mathematicians use, https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2015/01/04/254a-supplement-4-... is a good read (although it's aimed at readers already having some background in number theory).

Re: Feynman on Fermat's Last Theorem

#112

Post by eru » Sun, Jul 03, 2016, 11:39 PM UTC

jsprogrammer wrote: post #92

eru wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know what P and NP mean? What's your ~ supposed to mean? (You seem to be implying logical negation. But P is not meant to be a logical statement, thus can't be negated.) Plus what Chinjut said.

~ is a standard character for logical negation. See my replies elsewhere.

Oh, my question was more in the vein of "Obviously the standard notation doesn't make sense here. I assume you are not an idiot, so you must have meant something else."

Alas, jokes and sarcasm don't travel well over text. One of the reasons they are frowned upon in the HN guidelines.

Re: Feynman on Fermat's Last Theorem

#113

Post by bashinator » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 9:24 PM UTC

Chinjut wrote: post #104

jsprogrammer wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Where can I find that joke given by Feynman? Approximately 6 parents up this comment tree. I'll address your other comment here (HN has an inexplicably bad rate limit): The physical model is the literal characters: P != NP :)

I mean a cite that Feynman made that joke; where can I find that?

This whole talk is about it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3pYRn5j7oI