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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, @02:31AM (1 child)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 08 2018, @02:31AM (#718606) Journal

    Apologies. Posted that one in the middle of the night just as I was falling asleep.

    My position: if a black-n-white answer is required, I prefer the "open repositories with chances of noise" over "total access control and vetting with risks of good ideas falling between the cracks". Any "grey shade" solution is preferable.

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    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
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  • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday August 08 2018, @12:19PM

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Wednesday August 08 2018, @12:19PM (#718744) Journal

    Ah, okay. No need to apologize, and basically I agree that leaning toward open publication and open access is better. I was just a little confused at the seemingly conflicting posts.