At the Maths Jam conference, I was delighted to chair the first ever (and possibly only) edition of Spoof My Proof, a panel show devised by Colin Beveridge and Dave Gale as a special edition of their podcast Wrong, But Useful – the show that iTunes reviewer @twentythree calls an “unassuming, gentle and informative chat on mathematics”.
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László Babai reckons he can decide if two graphs are isomorphic in quasipolynomial time
László Babai in Chicago. Photo by Gabe Gaster, used with permission.
We’ve been slow to cover this, but if this week has taught us anything, it’s that taking your time over Important Maths News is always a good idea.
A couple of weeks ago, rumours started circulating around the cooler parts of the internet that László “Laci” Babai had come up with an algorithm to decide if two graphs are isomorphic in quasipolynomial time. A trio of mathematicians including Tim Gowers were on BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time discussing P vs NP while these rumours were circulating and made a big impression on Melvyn Bragg as they talked so excitedly about the prospect of something big being announced.
If Babai had done what the rumours were saying, this would be a huge advance – graph isomorphism is known to be an NP problem, so each step closer to a polynomial-time algorithm raises the P=NP excite-o-meter another notch.
Carnival of Mathematics 128
The next issue of the Carnival of Mathematics, rounding up blog posts from the month of October, and compiled by Mike, is now online at Walking Randomly.
The Carnival rounds up maths blog posts from all over the internet, including some from our own Aperiodical. See our Carnival of Mathematics page for more information.
Riemann Hypothesis not proved, part 2
Who could have guessed that this non-story about somebody being out of his depth and quite obviously wrong would get so out of hand? Here’s an update on The Continuing Tale Of The Man Whose Claims Couldn’t Be Verified.
Puzzlebomb – November 2015
Puzzlebomb is a monthly puzzle compendium. Issue 47 of Puzzlebomb, for November 2015, can be found here:
Puzzlebomb – Issue 47 – November 2015
The solutions to Issue 47 can be found here:
Puzzlebomb – Issue 47 – November 2015 – Solutions
Previous issues of Puzzlebomb, and their solutions, can be found at Puzzlebomb.co.uk.
Riemann Hypothesis not proved
Here’s a tweet from Alex Bellos this morning:
BBC claims Nigerian solves Riemann Hypothesis, most famous problem in maths. Surely a hoax! https://t.co/Wkltfkh2P3 https://t.co/UHGy9W8shC
— Alex Bellos (@alexbellos) November 17, 2015
He’s right to be surprised – as reported in Vanguard, a Nigerian newspaper:
The 156-year old Riemann Hypothesis, one of the most important problems in Mathematics, has been successfully resolved by Nigeria Scholar, Dr. Opeyemi Enoch.
Suspicion levels are raised, as the paper also reports:
Three of the [Clay Millenium Prize] problems had been solved and the prizes given to the winners. This makes it the fourth to be solved of all the seven problems.
Unless we missed something, that’s not massively true – the only Millennium Prize problem solved so far is the Poincaré conjecture.
Being a Professional Mathematician — now available as a podcast
When I worked for the MSOR Network under the National HE STEM Programme, we funded a project called Being a Professional Mathematician which was run by Tony Mann (University of Greenwich) and Chris Good (University of Birmingham). This included the production of a set of audio interviews with mathematicians about their work and historians about historical mathematicians. This audio is now available to listen to in podcast format.
Get the Being a Professional Mathematician podcast in RSS format.
Get the Being a Professional Mathematician podcast on iTunes.
The wider project includes resources and suggestions for using this audio in teaching undergraduates, inclunding the booklet Being a Professional Mathematician.
Enjoy!