Re:Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science
by pama on Monday August 03, 2026 @03:45PM
(#49160506)
It is unfair to dismiss contributions to decades old open problems as equivalent to calculating more digits of pi. It missed the mark by a lot—as does the two bucket simplifaction.
Re:Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science
by denismenace on Monday August 03, 2026 @04:06PM
(#49160746)
How does calculating more digits of pi help us?
Re:Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science
by sdenton4 on Monday August 03, 2026 @06:46PM
(#49162414)
Five (maybe six?) of the results are improvements on bounds. These kinds of problems tend to have some initial advances, and then stall out as the complexity of the bound skyrockets... until some grad student is bored enough to push the boundary. The big-O complexity of matrix multiplication is a good example of how this works: yeah, it's a useful problem, but the solutions are galactic algorithms, and increasingly convoluted.
As someone with a PhD in combinatorics, I believe that I'm qualified to say that, yes, there are problems as useless as calculating more digits of pi.
Re:Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science
by pama on Tuesday August 04, 2026 @01:08AM
(#49164531)
Your inverted logic does not hold. The fact that such useless problems for bounds exist does not mean that improving bounds is useless. 9 fields medals in the last twenty years, including the one to Terrence Tao, were for improvements on bounds. 3 of the 4 medals in 2022 were for bounds; 2 of these medals were in combinatorics.
Re:Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science
by sdenton4 on Tuesday August 04, 2026 @10:02AM
(#49169159)
I stated that boring bounds improvement problems exist, not that all bounds problems are boring... Sigh.
Re:Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science
by pama on Tuesday August 04, 2026 @11:23AM
(#49170278)
I agree boring problems exist; bounds may have a fare share of them. None of the bounds problems in this set are even close to this category; many of them are closer to the type of contributions that in the past got recognized by special awards. Your initial replies were misleading.
Re:Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science
by CamperBob2 on Tuesday August 04, 2026 @11:18AM
(#49170205)
As someone with a PhD in combinatorics, you're aware that it takes only one counterexample to invalidate a conjecture.
There's nowhere else to move the goalposts. You've already stashed them in the far corner of the parking garage down the street from the stadium. If you go any farther you'll leave the school grounds entirely.
Re:Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science
by tuatoru on Monday August 03, 2026 @04:19PM
(#49160888)
"It's just brute-forcing the search space."
Re:Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science
by buddhistdude on Monday August 03, 2026 @04:49PM
(#49161233)
It can move to any place within the search space but it can't move outside of it and it can't move in between the 'pixels'. Human thought can, as human thought has created the search space.
The two places were seeing lots of movement are:
* Updates to lower/upper bounds. In many cases, these kinds of problems are the deep-math equivalent of calculating more digits of pi. Yes, if you throw time at it you'll break the record, but it may not be terribly worthwhile.
* Finding counter examples which disprove conjectures. This is really useful, and helps offset some positivity bias on the human side, often bringing together known tools from distant silos.
If you read the list of ten results, almost all fall into one of these buckets.