The
New York Times put an article out on September 17, 2012 about a mathematician, Dr.
Mochizuki, who posted a 500 page paper on August 30. In this paper he claimed
to solve the abc conjecture. This is the use of letters that represent mathematical
variables in equations, where 3 integers share no common divisors other than 1.
This means they will be all primes numbers since even numbers are divisible by
2. I.e. a+b=c. This of course has many mathematicians
in an uproar of excitement and doubt. Some are saying that if it’s true it
would be a great break through while others are questioning it. Minhyong Kim, a
mathematician at the University of Oxford in England and the Pohang University
of Science and Technology in South Korea, said ““It would be a fantastic
breakthrough.” The ones questioning it
say, how can you agree with it if you can’t say what the ingredients are. It is said when someone first starts to read
it, it looks like something from outer space, interesting. But none the less it
should be taken into some seriousness because Dr. Mochizuki already has
significant numbers of proofs under his belt. It is said that it will take
months if not years to carefully review this new information and the information
already gained from previous years. This is a new language basically that has
to be carefully broke down and understood. How cool would it be if he did solve
it though? I have a hard time as it is understanding math but to know that
there is people out there that can actually break math down piece by piece and
make sense and proof of it, wow. It’s easy to understand that if you have one
apple and put it with another apple you get 2, but something of that complexity,
to actually be able to prove it, is out of this world. There will definitely be
a lot of people arguing this breakthrough and a lot going along with it, but to
say which side I’m on is hard. As I said
before math is hard for me as it is and to be asked to agree with someone who
claims to have proved a theory on math, forget it. But to also say I disagree
with it is a lie, because I don’t know it. I think I will leave the solving of
major math theories to the professionals and stick to my lectures and
textbooks. To go any further I think would make me go insane. Does anyone else
think they could try and understand proof to a major theory?
When numbers share no common divisors other than one, it doesn't have to mean that they themselves are prime. They are relatively prime. For example, take 4 and 9. Neither is prime, but their only COMMON divisor is 1.
ReplyDeleteIt is very cool that there are people out there trying to solve the "tough" mathematical questions. You never know what kinds of applications they might have! And I don't think you should give up on trying to understand them... If you break them down one step at a time, you may be surprised as to how much you understand!