## On proofs and more

October 17, 2013

This is a transcript of an exchange on Twitter on what mathematicians and others expect from proofs. (A previous exchange on a different topic is here. Twitter produces surprisingly nice results sometimes. What follows is a bit meandering, but interesting points are made.)

It began at 7:56 am – 27 Jun 13, with the twitter account of Republic of Mathematics (a website started by Gary Davis) quoting from Bill Thurston‘s great essay On proof and progress in mathematics. The quoted sentence was a short excerpt from the following:

The question is not even “How do mathematicians make progress in mathematics?”
Rather, as a more explicit (and leading) form of the question, I prefer “How do mathematicians advance human understanding of mathematics?”
This question brings to the fore something that is fundamental and pervasive: that what we are doing is finding ways for people to understand and think about mathematics.

To this, the account of The True Beauty of Math replied with “[Which is] why computer proofs [are of] little use.” Republic of Mathematics objected to this position, and quoted from an article by Sara Billey titled Computer Proofs. What is the value of computer assisted proofs?. The quoted sentence is an excerpt from:

Some mathematicians have tried to protect their egos by proposing that human proofs are superior to computer assisted proofs. They claim that we don’t learn as much from computer assisted proofs as we do from a human proof. They claim computer proofs can be difficult to verify. They claim computer proofs are less elegant. I find these complaints to be naive.

This was retweeted by Guy Longsworth, which is how I saw it.

## 187 – List of all presentations

January 10, 2012

For ease, I re-list here all the presentations we had throughout the term. I also include some of them. If you gave a presentation and would like your notes to be included, please email them to me and I’ll add them here.

• Jeremy Elison, Wednesday, October 12: Georg Cantor and infinity.
• Kevin Byrne, Wednesday, October 26: Alan Turing and Turing machines.
• Keith Ward, Monday, November 7: Grigori Perelman and the Poincaré conjecture.
• David Miller, Wednesday, November 16: Augustin Cauchy and Cauchy’s dispersion equation.
• Taylor Mitchell, Friday, November 18: Lajos Pósa and Hamiltonian circuits.
• Sheryl Tremble, Monday, November 28: Pythagoras and the Pythagorean theorem.
• Blake Dietz, Wednesday, November 30: $\mbox{\em Paul Erd\H os}$ and the Happy End problem.

Here are Jeremy’s notes on his presentation. Here is the Wikipedia page on Cantor, and a link to Cantor’s Attic, a wiki-style page discussing the different (set theoretic) notions of infinity.

Here are a link to the official page for the Alan Turing year, and the Wikipedia page on Turing. If you have heard of Conway’s Game of Life, you may enjoy the following video showing how to simulate a Turing machine within the Game of Life; the Droste effect it refers to is best explained in by H. Lenstra in a talk given at Princeton on April 3, 2007, and available here.

Here is a link to the Wikipedia page on Perelman, and the Clay Institute’s description of the Poincaré conjecture. In 2006, The New Yorker published an interesting article on the unfortunate “controversy” on the priority of Perelman’s proof.

Here are David’s slides on his presentation, and the Wikipedia page on Cauchy.

Here is a link to Ross Honsberger’s article on Pósa (including the result on Hamiltonian circuits that Taylor showed during her presentation).

Here are Sheryl’s slides on Pythagoras and his theorem. In case the gif file does not play, here is a separate copy:

The Pythagorean theorem has many proofs, even one discovered by President Garfield!

Finally, here is the Wikipedia page on $\mbox{Erd\H os}$. Oakland University has a nice page on him, including information on the $\mbox{Erd\H os}$ number; see also the page maintained by Peter Komjáth, and an online depository of most of $\mbox{Erd\H os's}$ papers.