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.
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.
AMS online opportunities
The American Mathematical Society have created a system of online listings for people offering awards, fellowships, professional opportunities and other maths-related callouts. There’s a website at ams.org/
The system is aimed at mathematics faculty/scientists, institutions, programs, postdocs/early-career mathematicians, postgrads, undergrads, high school students and teachers (so, pretty much anyone involved in maths), and we’ve cheekily used it to post a call for submissions of articles for our Irregulars column, where we feature guest posts from other authors.
More information
Awards, Fellowships and other opportunities, at the AMS website.
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.
Make your own bauble with icosahedral symmetry with Shapeways
Internet 3D printing emporium Shapeways has released a nifty little tool to create your own unique Christmas bauble, which they’ll print out and send to you in time for the festive season.
It works by mapping a triangular design onto a blown-out icosahedron, and applying some “kaleidoscope effects”. As far as I can tell, that means they expand and rotate the patterns so they overlap.
There’s a selection of built-in patterns you can choose from, or you can upload your own pattern to make a really unique decoration. However, because the resulting object needs to exist in the real world, you need to take care to make sure it all comes out in one connected piece. Shapeways have written some very clear instructions about how to achieve that.
Play: Ornament Creator from Shapeways
via Vladimir Bulatov on Google+, who seems to work for Shapeways now. Exciting!
Cheng vs Colbert
Eugenia Cheng was on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert recently. Here it is: