4 ms·
I'm curious why you think that would be funny, since in my opinion, that is the most likely outcome should such a solution exist at all.
by calhoun137 13y ago
I'm curious why you think that would be funny, since in my opinion, that is the most likely outcome should such a solution exist at all.
- Someone 13y agoFunny probably is not the right word, but I like it when mathematical breakthroughs reinforce the public's perception of mathematicians as living in their minds, not in the world. Because of that, I would find it more 'enjoyable' to see a proof that a polynomial time algorithm for TSP exists, than to see a proof by example, or to see a proof that go is a win for white or chess for black than to see a program that plays the game perfectly (and of course, within the space of constructive proofs, there are gradations. Exhaustive search would be extremely dull; a theory that generalizes to other problem spaces would be more interesting. Moving to another problem the various O(<n^3) matrix multiplication algorithms are 'funny' because, AFAIK, none of them has practical use.