Is the Riemann Hypothesis true?

[Andy_R]

It definitely does. But the bugger is you can never remember it the next morning.

No it doesn't. What it does do is make sure you don't remember the question in the first place.

 

[marinyork]

The general consensus of departments and other people I've had dealings with were that:-
Riemann hypothesis true.
BSDC is true.
p is not equal to np
and I didn't do enough Cohomology to understand Tate/Hodge fully nor many other people I've ever met even though it is related to an area I used to be interested in.

But of course they are only opinions, fairly meaningless until proven and any one of them may be completely unprovable or even turn out to be not defined well enough (if you look at the others as was indeed the case with others in Hilbert's list).

 

[ColinJ]

I know the answer, but I don't want to spoil the fun for those still working on it!

 

[Belly]

I have given this a lot of thought. I have arrived at the conclusion that, yes, it is correct. I'm not sure it is true though.

 

[Profpointy]

Bearing in mind that the first 10 billion zeros are on the critical line it seems likely that is is true.

Ah yes, but the first 10 billion swans looked at ( well maybe not quite that many) were white, ergo all swans are white. .... Fine until someone went to Australia. ( the abbos' all-swans-are-black theory unravelled at the same time of course).

I quite like the story of a group of the scientist, engineer & mathematician in a train to Scotland, when the engineer spots a black sheep in a field, "oh look, sheep are black in Scotland" . The scientist quickly points out that it's a bit of a generalisation, but agrees "there are some black sheep in Scotland". "no, no, no!" says the mathematician, "the most you can say, is that there appears to be at least one field in Scotland, that appears to contain at least one sheep, that appears to be black, ON AT LEAST ONE SIDE"

Say there's a hypothisis that says "all men are shorter than 100 feet" and you duly measure 10 billion men and sure enough, backs the hypothesis. Now then, what if you come across a 99 foot high man ?- which also "confirms" the hypothesis, but would make me doubt it.


My guess is that the Rieman hypothesis is true, but it could of course be unprovable, but that's a whole other story. By the way, there's a million dollar Clay prize if anyone proves it, (or disproves it) - but it must be said Mr Clay isn't exactly giving his money away.

Anyhow, that's enough of that, and I don't really pretend to understand it, nor really get the number theory links








I should just like to add that the previous statement means absolutely nothing to me.

 

[colly]

Yes. Or more correctly............yes, until it's no.

 

[marinyork]

I quite like the story of a group of the scientist, engineer & mathematician in a train to Scotland, when the engineer spots a black sheep in a field, "oh look, sheep are black in Scotland" . The scientist quickly points out that it's a bit of a generalisation, but agrees "there are some black sheep in Scotland". "no, no, no!" says the mathematician, "the most you can say, is that there appears to be at least one field in Scotland, that appears to contain at least one sheep, that appears to be black, ON AT LEAST ONE SIDE"

It does illustrate an important point, but generally speaking people are not very interested in the problem of induction. So it ends up being something glossed over among other things when talking in scientific discussions.

 

[deptfordmarmoset]

Understanding the Riemann hypothesis may best be achieved by going back to his original words:

…es ist sehr wahrscheinlich, dass alle Wurzeln reell sind.

(Trans: It's very probable that all Wurzels are real)

 

[Red Light]

There's no Reimann reason in it

 

[Red Light]

Well what I would normally do when faced with a question like this is to go back to the original papers...........oh no, Mad Doug seems to have eaten them.

Not another "The Doug ate my homework" excuse?

 

[TVC]

I proved it last week, but it changed nothing except that damn Nobel Prize committee started bothering me again, they're worse than Jehovah's Witnesses... So, no it doesn't matter.

 

[Archie_tect]

When we were 11 when we started squared numbers, cubes and square roots, II asked my maths teacher why when you squared two negative numbers it was a positive... he said, "Because it is, that's the rule"... and later I asked him what the square root of -1 was, and he said I'd find out later in the GCE course. When I found out it was 'j'... as it was called then [I believe it's now 'i'?]... that seemed a cop out. Sadly, my interest in advanced maths ended there and then.

 

[Yellow Fang]

When we were 11 when we started squared numbers, cubes and square roots, II asked my maths teacher why when you squared two negative numbers it was a positive... he said, "Because it is, that's the rule"... and later I asked him what the square root of -1 was, and he said I'd find out later in the GCE course. When I found out it was 'j'... as it was called then [I believe it's now 'i'?]... that seemed a cop out. Sadly, my interest in advanced maths ended there and then.

The square root of -1 is called i by mathematicians but j by electronics engineers to avoid confusion with the symbol for instantaneous current. j is very important in electrical engineering and electronics. It's used to calculate inductance and capacitance and reactive power. It's also used in RF engineering to cram in more bits of information in comms transmissions.

 

[Red Light]

The square root of -1 is called i by mathematicians but j by electronics engineers to avoid confusion with the symbol for instantaneous current. j is very important in electrical engineering and electronics. It's used to calculate inductance and capacitance and reactive power. It's also used in RF engineering to cram in more bits of information in comms transmissions.

But don't worry about it - its all imaginary

 

[srw]

I'm afraid I'm going to invoke the Wittgenstein interruptor in its original, pure form:
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen