from Hacker News

Ten Signs a Claimed Mathematical Breakthrough is Wrong

by gnosis on 7/29/13, 1:42 PM with 55 comments

  • by acangiano on 7/29/13, 3:40 PM

    One of the 'fun' aspects of running a math blog is that you get to see Word documents containing "proofs" of unresolved problems or the existence of God or Allah. A true glimpse into madness.
  • by amirhirsch on 7/29/13, 3:49 PM

    When I finally prove the Riemann Hypothesis it will be presented in HTML5 and Javascript with interactive graphs.
  • by mahmud on 7/29/13, 2:32 PM

    Site is overloaded, so here is the Coral cache:

    http://www.scottaaronson.com.nyud.net/blog/?p=304

    See also the famous Crackpot Index:

    http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html

  • by Patient0 on 7/29/13, 2:56 PM

    This is from 2008. Could you add (2008) to the title?
  • by archagon on 7/29/13, 8:03 PM

    I enjoyed the author's Beijing/Chinatown metaphor in point 10.
  • by thejteam on 7/29/13, 5:22 PM

    I probably disagree on the Tex one. I know several people with PhDs in engineering and science disciplines who have never used Tex. Several of them know enough math to at least make a reasonable stab at a few of the problems, even if they are unlikely to be successful.
  • by Sniffnoy on 7/29/13, 5:18 PM

    Note also signs 11 and 12 in the comments[1], and the later "Eight Signs A Claimed P≠NP Proof Is Wrong"[2]. (OK, so there's a bunch of overlap.)

    [1] http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=304#comment-8957

    [2] http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=458

  • by wolfganglechner on 7/29/13, 2:42 PM

    Most of the points require reading the whole paper first, isn't it?
  • by tjr on 7/29/13, 5:12 PM

    I wonder if there is a context in which preparing a document in TeX would be a strong indicator that you don't know what you're talking about?
  • by sillysaurus on 7/29/13, 7:06 PM

    Are mathematicians going to be using TeX in a hundred years? Two hundred? Five hundred? Two thousand?

    Math is timeless. TeX may be, but it's too soon to say. It's a recent invention. It's only been around for 35 years.