How I learned to love and fear the Riemann Hypothesis

Re:How I learned to love and fear the Riemann Hypothesis by waynecochran on Tuesday January 05, 2021 @12:18PM (#25647836)

This is the difference between a scientist and a mathematician. A scientist would consider the empirical evidence more than sufficient to consider RH to be true.

Of course there is hope that a proof of RH would reveal some deeper understanding -- not merely a conformation.

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Re:How I learned to love and fear the Riemann Hypothesis by hansvm on Tuesday January 05, 2021 @01:22PM (#25648885)

I'm not so sure a scientist would consider RH true at this point. Math has a rich history of conjectures appearing true for the first n dimensions, the first k inputs, the first z partial/tangential proofs, etc. The evidence for RH isn't any stronger than that for a plethora of eventually-proven-false conjectures.

Do you know if anyone has tabulated stats on conjecture proofs? That could be a fun dataset to examine.

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Re:How I learned to love and fear the Riemann Hypothesis by jjgreen on Tuesday January 05, 2021 @02:02PM (#25649478)

As Richard K. Guy's strong law of small numbers states: There aren't enough small numbers to meet the many demands made of them.

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