4 ms·

Wouldn't "Turing's Tiger Stripe Conjecture" be a better name for this? Considering there was no prior evidence for it until now?

pvarangot 15y ago
Hmm, I beleive conjecture is used when you are speaking about a potential theorem (i.e. something than can be mathematically proven to be right given certain axioms). This is a biological/chemical/natural theory, and is believed to be true given certain findings in some observed phenomena (i.e. statistics are involved in a certain way).
- gradstudent 15y ago
  A conjecture is an assertion made on the basis of incomplete evidence. I'm not familiar with Turing's work in this area but if (as others have commented) he studied PDEs and that appear to mimic biological processes, yet did not find a definitive link, then the conclusion that a connection between the two may exist can only be described as conjecture.
impendia 15y ago
Turing worked on a family of partial differential equations called "reaction-diffusion equations", and determined that for particular choices of the parameters, they produce phenomena similar to tiger stripes, leopard spots, and the like. One doesn't have to describe this in terms of biology; mathematically it is already interesting on its own. But how much cooler is it that this can be observed by a visit to a zoo! He (or perhaps biologists who studied his work?) conjectured that some biological process behaved according to his equations, and therefore produced the behavior they model. However, until now, no one had ever found such a process.
bo1024 15y ago
My understanding was that Turing's theory of morphogenesis had already been shown to be correct in some cases in biology; they just didn't know it to be true in the case of tiger stripes. In fact, they had shown it not to be true for some other striped animal (can't recall which one), which I think makes this discovery even more interesting.

pvarangot 15y ago

Hmm, I beleive conjecture is used when you are speaking about a potential theorem (i.e. something than can be mathematically proven to be right given certain axioms). This is a biological/chemical/natural theory, and is believed to be true given certain findings in some observed phenomena (i.e. statistics are involved in a certain way).

gradstudent 15y ago
A conjecture is an assertion made on the basis of incomplete evidence. I'm not familiar with Turing's work in this area but if (as others have commented) he studied PDEs and that appear to mimic biological processes, yet did not find a definitive link, then the conclusion that a connection between the two may exist can only be described as conjecture.

impendia 15y ago

Turing worked on a family of partial differential equations called "reaction-diffusion equations", and determined that for particular choices of the parameters, they produce phenomena similar to tiger stripes, leopard spots, and the like. One doesn't have to describe this in terms of biology; mathematically it is already interesting on its own. But how much cooler is it that this can be observed by a visit to a zoo! He (or perhaps biologists who studied his work?) conjectured that some biological process behaved according to his equations, and therefore produced the behavior they model. However, until now, no one had ever found such a process.

bo1024 15y ago

My understanding was that Turing's theory of morphogenesis had already been shown to be correct in some cases in biology; they just didn't know it to be true in the case of tiger stripes. In fact, they had shown it not to be true for some other striped animal (can't recall which one), which I think makes this discovery even more interesting.