The ABC Conjecture has not been proved

The ABC Conjecture has not been proved(mathbabe.org)

15 points by misleading_name 13 years ago | 9 comments

duaneb 13 years ago |

God dammit. Of course it hasn't been proved yet, nobody is viewing the theorem as accepted by the mathematical community. But such a headline makes me think that his proof was debunked, and is just as bad as claiming it was proved.... which, again, was not exactly a common viewpoint.

I did, however, like the bit where the writer proposed that the ultimate interpreter of the supposed proof should receive credit as well as the original thinker; from the look I took at the theorem, it looks to be an arduous task (to say the least).

EDIT: I am not a maths person, and I do not keep in touch with the mathematics community except where the news is big enough to reach other fields (as this supposed proof did), so perhaps my 'nobody' is unsourced. But I believe anyone who would be 'in touch' enough to read this blog post would understand that the supposed proof is far from being accepted as a true proof.

wging 13 years ago | |

Who's to say that there's going to be a single 'ultimate interpreter' of the proof? If it's a community effort do we pull a Time Magazine and say everyone proved it... oh, and I guess Shin Mochizuki helped.

This whole article is just kind of silly. The fact that we don't understand it is a fact about ourselves, not about Mochizuki's reasoning. The argument is meaningful and correct or it isn't, and our perceptions of it are secondary to the thing itself.

rizzom5000 13 years ago | | |

I have to agree with this. There is a lot of discussion about this proof, and also with the idea that the reasoning that leads to it may reveal new insight.

There is little to gain by lamenting the potential difficulty of verification by pointing out your interpretation of the accessibility of previous famous proof attempts.

fragsworth 13 years ago | |

It does seem like a link-baity title. It would be more accurate to say "The proof of the ABC Conjecture has not been fully understood yet", which is actually not news because we're in the same state of things as when the proof was announced...

ISL 13 years ago |

Calling out the lack of peer review is a red herring. There is plenty of incorrect work accepted into journals every day.

If Mochizuki's work is correct, then in most senses, the result is proven. Whether that proof is yet accepted is another matter entirely.

marshray 13 years ago |

This region between mathematical brilliance and madness appears really strange.

adrianbg 13 years ago |

too long, don't bother reading: A proposition is only considered proven when a bunch of experts reach a consensus that a proposed proof is correct. This is currently not the case for the ABC conjecture.

nate_martin 13 years ago |

has not been proved...yet, and is currently under review by the math community.

chris_wot 13 years ago |

Given its name, saying the ABC Conjecture has not been proved is really repeating yourself.