What is needed is not an influential voice so much as an ambitious doer, someone who will start the project instead of talking about it. As Goethe said: What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it! Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. If someone started such a project, those influential people with opinions on the way it should be carride out would soon be on the bandwagon, and probably take over the project. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Steve Gray" <stevebg@adelphia.net> To: "math-fun" <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2006 9:10 PM Subject: Re: [math-fun] Most influential mathematician?
I published a proof in the 3/2003 Monthly that I was then not sure was correct and, after thinking about it for hours, I'm still not sure! It doesn't look like other proofs, involving a trick that seems a little too arbitrary, and I don't know quite how to think about it. Maybe the computer could tell me. :o
Steve Gray
----- Original Message ----- From: "Henry Baker" <hbaker1@pipeline.com> To: "Gareth McCaughan" <gareth.mccaughan@pobox.com> Cc: <dasimov@earthlink.net>; <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2006 5:02 PM Subject: Re: [math-fun] Most influential mathematician?
Computer proof-checking technology (HW & SW) have gotten to the point where it now makes sense to develop a system whereby _every_ mathematical proof could eventually be _checked_ by computer. This won't happen overnight, but will require a 10-20 year effort to develop a generic system into which one could shovel all the lemmas, theorems, etc., so that _every_ paper submitted to a math journal would come with its own certification that the proof is valid.
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