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I never understood why the Rieman Hypothesis is interesting/important. Is there an easy way to explain why it gets so much attention?
by TekMol 8y ago
I never understood why the Rieman Hypothesis is interesting/important. Is there an easy way to explain why it gets so much attention?
- kapauldo 8y agoIt's because no one knows the derivation of primes and rieman shows an equilibrium of sorts by summing a pattern that converges on primes.
- pdpi 8y agoWell, any reasonable-sounding problem proposed by a famous mathematician that remains unsolved for a century is noteworthy just on that alone. Riemann's hypothesis qualifies as this. The hypothesis is notable on its own because it gives us insights into the distribution of the prime numbers.
- Certhas 8y agoThere is a vast array of mathematical results that hold _if_ Riemann is true. Wikipedia has a list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis#Consequences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis#Consequence... Essentially, it seems to encode a hard ground truth on the behaviour (and in particular the growth) of arithmetic structures. It often (but not always) is the case that Riemann gives you a best/strongest version of a result. Meaning that the zeta function in some meaningful way encodes all there is to know.
- jesuslop 8y agoThere are connections in physics and it fueled important Algebraic Geometry post war developents, to me is the divergent series aspect that is mysterious.
- jonbaer 8y agoBest book I have read on the subject ... https://www.amazon.com/Riemann-Hypothesis-Greatest-Unsolved-Mathematics/dp/0374529353/ https://www.amazon.com/Riemann-Hypothesis-Greatest-Unsolved-... ... previous discussion ... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15933893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15933893