
Complex problem made simple sends computer scientists wild - brianclements
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28478-complex-problem-made-simple-sends-computer-scientists-wild/
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WalterSear
_Babai declined to be interviewed about the work, saying it must first stand
up to the scrutiny of peer review. “I understand that in the internet age,
even a simple seminar announcement can trigger an explosion in the
blogosphere, but this is no reason to compromise the process,” he says. “The
reaction of colleagues at this point is not celebration but anticipation. The
results need to be verified by the research community._

I say, bravo.

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notacoward
I came here to say the same thing, but you beat me to it. It's awesome that
Babai has used this moment in the spotlight to deliver a message about respect
for the scientific process. What class.

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0xdeadbeefbabe
> Babai’s new result says that solving graph isomorphism takes slightly longer
> than polynomial time – not quite placing it in P, but significantly shifting
> the needle for the first time.

What is the needle and how did it shift significantly for the first time?

Edit: They already knew it was in NP, but now they know it is not in P (or not
quite in P)?

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poizan42
If it was proven that it's not in P then we would have shown that P!=NP which
would be _HUGE_.

No, this is "merely" finding a more efficient algorithm for a problem which we
still don't know exactly where belongs. From a complexity theoretical
viewpoint nothing is changed. It's still possible that graph isomorphism is in
P.

Now if graph isomorphism is shown to be NP-complete then this result would
imply that every problem in NP can be solved in sub-exponential time which
would have huge practical consequences.

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i573323
Now THAT's a clickbaitey title.

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uremog
What these Computer Scientists do next will amaze you!

