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> surely there exist useful proofs that require 10,000 pages minimum The classification of finite simple groups "consists of tens of thousands of pages in seve
by jackmaney 12y ago
> surely there exist useful proofs that require 10,000 pages minimum
The classification of finite simple groups "consists of tens of thousands of pages in several hundred journal articles written by about 100 authors, published mostly between 1955 and 2004."[1]
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_finite_simple_groups http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_finite_simple...
- Retra 12y agoThat is a long proof, yes, but it doesn't support my point. One could easily imagine a formalization that could compress all that work into a single sentence. What you can't do is compress _all_ proofs to single-sentence proofs using a finite number of unique symbols.