Thursday, September 20, 2012

abc conjecture...what?




            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? 

1 comment:

  1. 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.

    It 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!

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