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Subtitle: "Terence Tao successfully attacks the Erdős Discrepancy Problem by building on an online collaboration." First paragraph: "A mathematical puzzle that

by ipsum2 11y ago

Subtitle: "Terence Tao successfully attacks the Erdős Discrepancy Problem by building on an online collaboration." First paragraph: "A mathematical puzzle that resisted solution for 80 years — including computerized attempts to crack it — appears to have yielded to a single mathematician." This irks me.

huac 11y ago
Yeah, esp since Tao admits that a comment on his blog gave him the necessary insight.
- _nedR 11y ago
  Yes as the Nature article says, the commenter who gave Tao the initial idea is Uwe Stroinski, who received a PhD in mathematics from the University of Tübingen. Just repeating his name here because i think his contribution should not be missed.
jasode 11y ago
> by building on an online collaboration." [...] appears to have yielded to a single mathematician." >This irks me. It didn't bother me because I don't interpret the "collaboration" and "single mathematician" as contradictory. In other words, all mathematics is built upon group contributions whether the collaboration happens digitally online or via letters transported across 17th century continental Europe. In this case, "single mathematician" doesn't mean a person who discovered every insight and connected all the dots. Instead, it means the one who connected the last dot. So far, it looks like Tao solved the last step of the puzzle and no one else independently solved it and submitted a proof at the same time. Contrast this situation to the invention of calculus which was simultaneously created by Newton and Leibniz.
- conistonwater 11y ago
  > Contrast this situation to the invention of calculus which was simultaneously created by Newton and Leibniz. There were plenty of precursors to calculus, coming from the likes of Descartes, Fermat and Pascal. For example: http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/HistTopics/The_rise_of_calculus.html http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/HistTopics/The_rise_of_c...
jessriedel 11y ago
Echoing what jasode said, I don't think this blog comment makes this much less of a Tao accomplishment, even if the comment was absolutely crucial. Tons of scientific insights can traced back to off-hand conversations with colleagues; the fact that this happened on a blog rather than over coffee in person is not relevant to priority claims. When insights aren't traced in this way, it's usually because the person just hasn't kept an exhaustive record of all the useful conversations in his head (rather than because there were no such useful conversations). In other words, if you think this degree of collaboration is enough to characterize the discovery as not individual, then there have been no individual discoveries ever. But that's not a very useful definition, because there are clearly some discoveries that are much more collaborative than others.
jhanschoo 11y ago
> The second is a logarithmically averaged version of the Elliott conjecture, established recently by the author The proof relies on a variation of a recently proven conjecture.

by ipsum2 11y ago

huac 11y ago

Yeah, esp since Tao admits that a comment on his blog gave him the necessary insight.

_nedR 11y ago
Yes as the Nature article says, the commenter who gave Tao the initial idea is Uwe Stroinski, who received a PhD in mathematics from the University of Tübingen. Just repeating his name here because i think his contribution should not be missed.

jasode 11y ago

> by building on an online collaboration." [...] appears to have yielded to a single mathematician." >This irks me. It didn't bother me because I don't interpret the "collaboration" and "single mathematician" as contradictory. In other words, all mathematics is built upon group contributions whether the collaboration happens digitally online or via letters transported across 17th century continental Europe. In this case, "single mathematician" doesn't mean a person who discovered every insight and connected all the dots. Instead, it means the one who connected the last dot. So far, it looks like Tao solved the last step of the puzzle and no one else independently solved it and submitted a proof at the same time. Contrast this situation to the invention of calculus which was simultaneously created by Newton and Leibniz.

conistonwater 11y ago
> Contrast this situation to the invention of calculus which was simultaneously created by Newton and Leibniz. There were plenty of precursors to calculus, coming from the likes of Descartes, Fermat and Pascal. For example: http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/HistTopics/The_rise_of_calculus.html http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/HistTopics/The_rise_of_c...

jessriedel 11y ago

Echoing what jasode said, I don't think this blog comment makes this much less of a Tao accomplishment, even if the comment was absolutely crucial. Tons of scientific insights can traced back to off-hand conversations with colleagues; the fact that this happened on a blog rather than over coffee in person is not relevant to priority claims. When insights aren't traced in this way, it's usually because the person just hasn't kept an exhaustive record of all the useful conversations in his head (rather than because there were no such useful conversations). In other words, if you think this degree of collaboration is enough to characterize the discovery as not individual, then there have been no individual discoveries ever. But that's not a very useful definition, because there are clearly some discoveries that are much more collaborative than others.

jhanschoo 11y ago

> The second is a logarithmically averaged version of the Elliott conjecture, established recently by the author The proof relies on a variation of a recently proven conjecture.