Sources Contact Advanced Search Tutorials

An Interest In:

Web News this Week

Search Archive

Some of Our Sources

View All Sources

Help Webnuz

Referal links:

May 4, 2018 03:22 pm

60-Year-Old Maths Problem Partly Solved By Amateur

An amateur mathematician has made the first breakthrough in more than 60 years towards solving a well-known maths problem. From a report: Aubrey de Grey, who is more widely known as a maverick biologist intent on extending the human lifespan, has taken the academic world by surprise after announcing a new solution to the so-called Hadwiger-Nelson problem. The problem sounds deceptively simple, but despite some professionals spending years trying to crack it, progress has stalled since shortly after the puzzle was first posed in 1950. "Literally, this is the first progress in more than 60 years," said Gil Kalai, a mathematician at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The problem is as follows. Imagine a collection of dots connected by lines. The dots can be arranged any way at all, the only rule is that all the connecting lines must be of equal length. For instance, in a square the diagonal would not be joined up, but the outer edges would be. Now, colour in all the dots so that no two connected points have the same colour. How many colours are required. For a square, the answer would be two. But the Hadwiger-Nelson problem asks what the minimum would be for any configuration â" even one that extends across a plane of infinite size.

Slashdot

Slashdot was originally created in September of 1997 by Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda. Today it is owned by Geeknet, Inc..

More About this Source Visit Slashdot