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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday August 07 2018, @09:22AM   Printer-friendly
from the pics-or-it-didn't-happen dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

As he was brushing his teeth on the morning of July 17, 2014, Thomas Royen, a little-known retired German statistician, suddenly lit upon the proof of a famous conjecture at the intersection of geometry, probability theory, and statistics that had eluded top experts for decades.

Known as the Gaussian correlation inequality (GCI), the conjecture originated in the 1950s, was posed in its most elegant form in 1972 and has held mathematicians in its thrall ever since. "I know of people who worked on it for 40 years," said Donald Richards, a statistician at Pennsylvania State University. "I myself worked on it for 30 years."

[...] No one is quite sure how, in the 21st century, news of Royen's proof managed to travel so slowly. "It was clearly a lack of communication in an age where it's very easy to communicate," [Bo'az] Klartag said.

"But anyway, at least we found it," he added—and "it's beautiful."

[...] The "feeling of deep joy and gratitude" that comes from finding an important proof has been reward enough. "It is like a kind of grace," he said. "We can work for a long time on a problem and suddenly an angel—[which] stands here poetically for the mysteries of our neurons—brings a good idea."

Source: https://www.wired.com/2017/04/elusive-math-proof-found-almost-lost

Abstract

Paper


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday August 08 2018, @12:14AM (1 child)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 08 2018, @12:14AM (#718528) Journal

    Mmm... The type of products subject to BS3704 need to act as a 'pass nothing' type of filter. No, I'm not BSiting you, check it up [bsigroup.com]

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  • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday August 08 2018, @12:26AM

    by acid andy (1683) on Wednesday August 08 2018, @12:26AM (#718533) Homepage Journal

    No, I'm not BSiting you, check it up

    I tried to, but my repairman persuaded me to upgrade my firewall to BS3704 and now none of teh internets will get through it.

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