

Collatz 3n + 1 conjecture possibly solved - wslh
http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2011/06/01/collatz-3n-1-conjecture-solved/

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acangiano
Misleading title and post virtually devoid of content. Link to the actual
paper: [http://preprint.math.uni-
hamburg.de/public/papers/hbam/hbam2...](http://preprint.math.uni-
hamburg.de/public/papers/hbam/hbam2011-09.pdf)

~~~
wslh
Title changed. Thanks.

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yuvadam
The paper has not been peer reviewed yet. Therefore the conjecture has not yet
been _solved_.

Have we forgot the recent NP≠P paper? The author was also a highly-regarded
scientist. That did not guarantee anything.

~~~
brown9-2
Speaking of which, was that NP≠P paper debunked? What came of that?

~~~
mitmatt
It was debunked by some of the top minds in the world (e.g. Terry Tao), though
the author's webpage states that it's under journal review.

Here's the "official" debunking summary on PolyMath:

[http://michaelnielsen.org/polymath1/index.php?title=Deolalik...](http://michaelnielsen.org/polymath1/index.php?title=Deolalikar%27s_P!=NP_paper)

If you want to read some of the discussions, a good place to start is RJ
Lipton's blog and the comments there:

[http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2010/08/12/fatal-flaws-in-
deol...](http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2010/08/12/fatal-flaws-in-deolalikars-
proof/)

There were also a few HN posts, e.g.:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1600068>

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chime
I would wait for this to be peer-reviewed before getting excited. Especially
since Paul Erdős said about the Collatz conjecture: "Mathematics is not yet
ready for such problems." ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collatz_conjecture>
)

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bitdiddle
Roy Adler made that same, which reminds me, I wonder if Erdos offered money
for this one?

~~~
terio
Erdös also said: "Mathematics is not yet ready for such problems."

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michael_dorfman
Any mathematicians here wish to take a look at the paper, and comment on the
likelihood the proof is solid?

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bitdiddle
I will look at it this weekend. If true, the productivity of math departments
everywhere will go up. I know so many that banged their heads on this one for
a while. I once wasted an entire week playing with this on the Symbolics. It's
horribly addicting because of it's simplicity.

~~~
pavel_lishin
How do you measure the productivity of a math department?

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dreamux
One; minus the time spent either dividing even numbers by two or multiplying
odd numbers by three and adding one, over the total time working.

