Advogato: Proof: pure mathematics is no longer a game

Posted 6 Dec 2013 at 23:46 UTC (updated 7 Dec 2013 at 23:14 UTC) by badvogato

Pure mathematics is no longer a game for the young and restless only. Thanks to Chinese American Dr. Zhang Yitang's daring effort at raising the bar for 'bounded gap of prime numbers' from two to 70 millions, hence start the race towards solving 'Twin Prime Conjecture'

I am so pleased to watch this most recent coverage for Chinese audience from reporter of Voice of America. I've met most of Chinese folks in that interview.

I have been writing about inspirations Dr Zhang has inadverdently generated by his publication at Annuals of Mathematics. I read many coverage about this great excitement in pure mathematics world. I am particularly like this reader's comment quoted below. It goes back to my own thinking 'What is mathematics, really'. Once a maths lover, always a maths lover. Once a warrior, always a warrior. Life is beauty and terror. Mathematicians must have terrifying moments, that what millions see as self evident, need no proof, he has to take on the challenge to provide a mathematical proof without any funding from world government but private institution like Princeton Advanced Study.

"When there are possibly a million approaches towards solving a problem, and the feasibility of each approach is verifiable in polynomial time, this problem is called NP-HARD. When a prophet tells you that one particular approach is doable, then everybody can solve this problem in polynomial time.

When there are a million conjectures, and the provability of each conjecture requires indefinite time to know, this family of conjectures is called UNDECIDABLE. When a prophet tells you that one particular conjecture (e.g. bounded gaps between primes) is doable with contemporary techniques (modification of GPY), then a lot mathematicians, Tao for instance, would stop their current work and prove the conjecture “within months of each other”. I think you shouldn’t call this “a complete coincidence”.

What I do at my workplace is no pure mathematics nor rocket science. But I appreciate my own work, even when others have no need or no desire to pay attention to those details I spent majority of my time re-work out many inherited 'lousy' programming procedures. Here is an example, re-worded for this forum's liberal-minded readers:

A basic SQL problem:

if i have a result set, say:



CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE DEL_OFOFFLINE_OLDMSG AS


V_max ofHolyPresence.Offlinedate%type := NULL 


BEGIN


delete from ofoffHolyline 


where creationdate older than ( select max(AdamIsBorn) from ofoffHolyline ) - ChristResurrect;

commit; 


END


END DEL_OFOFFLINE_OLDMSG

DISCLAIMER: THIS IS NOT A GENOCIDE PROCEDURE BUT PURIFYING FOR THE SAKE OF THIS PLANET TREES.

Since there can easily be many millions of records in my result set, current implementation is VERY inefficient at dealing with 'batch' deletion as it attempts to go through an INNER loop and joining two tables and sort messages that belong to one user. I have no control over chained blocks which might cause condition at any unspecific time when one out of thousands users might NOT be able to get messages delivered to him in real time when the job is in the run, how can I declare a curse/pointer to delete, let's say, 100 records at a time, regardless of what religious holy book it belongs to?

There was another superb recent advance in the field: Peter Scholze’s construction of Galois representations attached to torsion classes in the cohomology of locally symmeteric spaces for GL_n.

Since it doesn’t deal with elementary mathematics, it of course, recieved absolutely no press. Can one hope that someone at Quanta will take up the challenge to write a popular piece on it?

I have to air my dissent that awarding Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo was a bad miscalculation from all parties. If Liu hadn't been awarded the prize, his wife wouldn't be as depressed as she is NOW. Husband and wife may still continue to work as a team for a brighter future they believed in, for better or for worse.

Kidnapping of Dr. Wang Bingzhang was a far worse violation of human rights . Resue Dr. Wang bingzhang from his sentence of life in Chinese prison ought to have more urgent call than any other case.

Luis E. Tellez

President

The Witherspoon Institute
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Guangcheng Chen Made Senior Fellow
Benjamin Carson Receives Witherspoon Medal
Jennifer Bryson Published in New Book
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UK Guardian links Gary Locke stepping down with Chen Guangcheng's ill-timed fate.

IMHO, in Cheng Guangcheng's place was the ghost of Dr. Wang

Arbitary detention of Dr. Wang Bingzhang and a top priority in its Foreign Policy. Yet what Gary Locke has accomplished during his stay in China and what Witherspoon Institution is doing now?

Dr. Li Cheng , Ph.D Political Science from Princeton Univ.

罗慰年：中美之战是文化与制度之战_共识网

www.21ccom.net › 全球事务 › 战略与外交

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1831年，法国一位名叫托克维尔的年轻的公务员，跟一位同事，奉命来美国考察美国刑法和监狱制度。年仅26岁的托克维尔，是个不安分守己的人。

Luo Wei Nian: Sino-US conflict has always been a dialectical entanglement
that advances world culture and religious beliefs.

Abstract in English ( by badvogato@advogato):

From West, cultural dominance takes the center stage as a result of
Darwinism following The Enlightment. Political order is transferring
underneath ecclesiastical law to parliamentary constitutional authority of
the majority rule.

For the East, inward/aesthetic cultivation of the Self was the holistic
Orientation for members of the elite ruling class until the weak body with
dreamy spirit was taken over by foreign/western power. In place of the
systematic lack of interest in Christianity's saving power is a profound
aesthetic theory and pratice among the elites. Self cultivation and
restraint is the natural law governing polity from close-knit family to
society at large.

Proof: pure mathematics is no longer a game

Posted 6 Dec 2013 at 23:46 UTC (updated 7 Dec 2013 at 23:14 UTC) by badvogato

in maths world, criticisms can always settle on good terms?, posted 8 Dec 2013 at 00:46 UTC by badvogato » (Master)

more to read about obscure maths advancement, posted 8 Dec 2013 at 02:12 UTC by badvogato » (Master)

Nobel Peace Prize , posted 9 Dec 2013 at 16:09 UTC by badvogato » (Master)

pure politics is still the only game in town?, posted 23 Dec 2013 at 15:46 UTC by sye » (Journeyer)

United Nations Working Group declared ..., posted 23 Dec 2013 at 21:42 UTC by badvogato » (Master)

VOA Chinese report on newly appointed director of Brookings, posted 28 May 2014 at 03:58 UTC by badvogato » (Master)

a summery and a new task of translating the whole article, posted 29 May 2014 at 14:19 UTC by badvogato » (Master)