Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Reading about the wiki and the Group that has formed, it seems to me that things would go a lot smoother if Vinay Deolalikar simply spoke about what he's done. It would be a lot easier to convey the outline of what he's done and answer questions in that format.

Perhaps I'm missing something, but face to face communication will leave a lot fewer people guessing.

Note: I won't even pretend to understand that mathematical discussions, so it's likely that many already understand the gist. It doesn't sound like it though.



I guess that this might be a little like Andrew Wiles' Fermat's Last Theorem proof where only a very small group of mathematicians were capable of understanding the whole thing and of verifying its correctness. If that's the case then those who are capable probably don't need much from Deolalikar in way of explanation, they'll be able to read through the whole thing and understand what he's doing, it'll just take time to carefully decide whether each individual step he's making is valid.

That's just my guess of course, I know no more about this than anyone else so maybe the proof is particularly esoteric and it won't be obvious to even experts what he's trying to do.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: