Title
the two subjects most associated to mathematics in the layman imagination are
I knew Math was going woke when the Annals of combinatorics
Sitting in LDT conference.
Are all Annals papers really excellent? 1 2
Job market after getting a job 1 2
Examples of mathematicians moving to lesser departments to avoid 1 2
Why did Minhyong Kim leave Oxford?
[nuke] If you want to prove anything significant, you need to go crackpot mode 1 2
What are the best places for conference tourism? 1 2
The olden days
Taking the wife with you for a conference 1 2
How hard to get in EPFL
Again, please find a solution
Good introductory books on chaos theory and its practical implications 1 2
The most important problem in your sub-sub-field
Best MJR IDs 1 2 3 4 5
[nuke] Novikov Conjecture
At what age should one grow their Einstein hair out like Carlos Rovelli & Michio
How does Eric Weinstein have so much free time? 1 2 3 4
Is CUNY anti Semitic? 1 2 3 4 5
What's your appraisal of Aaron TK Chow? 1 2 3
Indian job market rumours 1 2
When do you think an AGI will be a better mathematician than, e.g., Von Neumann?
Salary in Singapore
PhD advisers at random places with a good track record 1 2 3
Jacob Ziv has died
Why did Teleman return to Berkeley from Oxford?
How high is the salary of an assistant professor (US tenure-track equivalent) in
Have you told your parents you’re an undergrad yet?
Rough Job Market 1 2
Top mathematicians still in Russia 1 2
What is the highest form of technique you hope to achieve?
What's your favorite Soviet? 1 2
Are pure mathematicians underrated in terms of fame & acclaim? 1 2
PSU vs UMD 1 2
Yay I got a TT offer at a top ten!
Will the program "toposes as bridges" lead to a rain of results?
Proof techniques that you can’t support or of which you are suspicious 1 2 3
Good enough Putnam score to list for the top grad schools (Harvard, MIT, etc.) 1 2 3
Tenure track job application results 1 2 ... 142 143 144

Cambridge Combinatorics Seminar

  1. Top Mathematician
    sova

    Combinatorics people have the history of overhyping a nothing burger. Oh Erdős conjectured it 50 years ago and no one was able to solve it!

    Let me give you an example. Remember that proof of Sensitivity conjecture by Hao Huang? They said it's a big deal, a tough problem that remained stubbornly unsolved for X years. Well, the proof was only 4 pages of elementary algebra, which was later condensed into 1 page by Don Knuth. They even hyped it so the paper got published in Annals. Logic says it's not a tough problem at all but either (1) Not many people cared about it, or (2) People who tried to solve it before were not very bright. I checked prior works on Sensitivity conjecture and indeed the literature was very thin. It was never a big deal to begin with.

    That's why I take Gil Kalai's morning sensation with a grain of salt.

    Same thing could be said about Kahn-Kalai as well.

    Yeah hyping the sensitivity conjecture like they did was massively stupid.

    1 weeksova
    Quote 1 Up 1 Down Report
  2. Top Mathematician
    kegt

    It is sad that threads such as this constantly derail into argument about importance of result. The result is clearly interesting and important to some, so in my mind this makes it worthy of discussion and celebration. In truth, it will not be for many years until relative importance of mathematical results is truly understood. But for now we should at least celebrate such progress. As someone previously mentioned in this very thread, progress in mathematics is slow, so why not allow us to cherish this result? Even for outsiders of combinatorics

    1 weekkegt
    Quote 11 Up 1 Down Report
  3. Top Mathematician
    kjru

    As someone previously mentioned in this very thread, progress in mathematics is slow, so why not allow us to cherish this result?

    What's stopping the cherishers from cherishing and celebrating? This is a great occasion to also explain the non-obvious value of the field to people who have the mistaken (or is it?) impression that it's a glass bead game.

    1 weekkjru
    Quote 3 Up 1 Down Report
  4. Top Mathematician
    wput

    Sensitivity conjecture was a big deal for the field, a lot of people tried for many years and couldn't make progress. Sometimes in math it is way easier to verify a proof works than to find it. It's basically an NP property, easy to verify hard to find. I can understand people outside of CS to not be able to understand this concept and thus naively say "short easy proof means not hard".

    1 weekwput
    Quote 13 Up 1 Down Report
  5. Top Mathematician
    othb

    Sensitivity conjecture was a big deal for the field, a lot of people tried for many years and couldn't make progress. Sometimes in math it is way easier to verify a proof works than to find it. It's basically an NP property, easy to verify hard to find. I can understand people outside of CS to not be able to understand this concept and thus naively say "short easy proof means not hard".

    That conjecture surely triggered a number of sensitive people.

    1 weekothb
    Quote 10 Up 0 Down Report
  6. Top Mathematician
    yxtr

    Sensitivity conjecture was a big deal for the field, a lot of people tried for many years and couldn't make progress. Sometimes in math it is way easier to verify a proof works than to find it. It's basically an NP property, easy to verify hard to find. I can understand people outside of CS to not be able to understand this concept and thus naively say "short easy proof means not hard".

    This is exactly the argument by the charlatans in the tale of the emperor's new cloths. Oh those cloths are made with the most sophisticated material. You cannot see it if you are too dumb!

    1 weekyxtr
    Quote 4 Up 4 Down Report
  7. Top Mathematician
    ddby

    Sensitivity conjecture was a big deal for the field, a lot of people tried for many years and couldn't make progress. Sometimes in math it is way easier to verify a proof works than to find it. It's basically an NP property, easy to verify hard to find. I can understand people outside of CS to not be able to understand this concept and thus naively say "short easy proof means not hard".

    This is exactly the argument by the charlatans in the tale of the emperor's new cloths. Oh those cloths are made with the most sophisticated material. You cannot see it if you are too dumb!

    You got it upside down. AG is the most sophisticated material that only indoctrinated charlatans, the mean gossip girls in the realm, revere.

    1 weekddby
    Quote 2 Up 0 Down Report
  8. Top Mathematician
    bkiy

    All this discussion about the value of the Ramsey numbers is funny.  What is the ultimate value in the study of, e.g., numbers or algebraic varieties that is lacking in the study of elementary discrete structures, like graphs and hypergraphs? Honestly, I do not have a motivated answer to this question, and a priori I cannot say that they do not deserve to be studied. There is actually some additional attraction, as for me, in the simplicity of these abstract objects.  What is their study indeed lacking, is the presence of deep, intricate and complicated structures, like the ones we encounter in the study of numbers, varieties or manifolds. This indeed can be said as making the study of the latter more appealing as the mathematics is exactly the study of hidden structures behind elementary abstract object; and most of the mathematics is naturally happening where there is the abundance of such structures. But I can not really say that such reasoning could be named by the vague term «value». At least, this does not seem motivated for me to be the reason for choosing numbers over graphs as more «valuable» objects of study. (I am not a combinatorist myself, though I have some shallow passion to combinatorics lasting from the olympiad childhood.)

    1 weekbkiy
    Quote 4 Up 0 Down Report
  9. Top Mathematician
    yxsj

    Why are Ramsey numbers any less intrinsically interesting than elliptic curves?

    A hundred problems of independent interest lead you to elliptic curves but nothing other than Ramsey numbers leads you to Ramsey numbers. The lack of interconnection.

    “Interconnection” is a bad standard for judging mathematics. Things are beautiful and deep, or they aren’t. There are tons of highly interconnected but boring problems.

    1 weekyxsj
    Quote 0 Up 2 Down Report
  10. Top Mathematician
    igej

    About the paper itself, it really does look like a complicated ad hoc kind of inductive argument, almost completely elementary. Lots of one-variable inequalities to keep track of parameters. However no use of any tools such as quasirandomness, probabilistic method, entropy.....

    1 weekigej
    Quote 0 Up 0 Down Report
  11. Top Mathematician
    djuj

    All this discussion about the value of the Ramsey numbers is funny.  What is the ultimate value in the study of, e.g., numbers or algebraic varieties that is lacking in the study of elementary discrete structures, like graphs and hypergraphs? Honestly, I do not have a motivated answer to this question, and a priori I cannot say that they do not deserve to be studied. There is actually some additional attraction, as for me, in the simplicity of these abstract objects.  What is their study indeed lacking, is the presence of deep, intricate and complicated structures, like the ones we encounter in the study of numbers, varieties or manifolds. This indeed can be said as making the study of the latter more appealing as the mathematics is exactly the study of hidden structures behind elementary abstract object; and most of the mathematics is naturally happening where there is the abundance of such structures. But I can not really say that such reasoning could be named by the vague term «value». At least, this does not seem motivated for me to be the reason for choosing numbers over graphs as more «valuable» objects of study. (I am not a combinatorist myself, though I have some shallow passion to combinatorics lasting from the olympiad childhood.)

    As many already said in this thread people in Hungarian combinatorics generally care about techniques and methods more than structures. The diagonal Ramsey problem is just one of the oldest and simplest problems that they haven't been able to settle after so many years of intensive effort and whose resolutions are believed to lead to major progress on other problems. Their mindset is different from that of algebraic geometers and number theorists as far as I know.

    If you wanna talk about some "deep, intricate, and complicated structures" arising from graphs, then you're welcome to have a look at the so-called Graph Minor Theory of Robertson-Seymour. This is by no means Hungarian combinatorics but is enough to show you the study of graphs is definitely not lacking the presence of "deep, intricate, and complicated structures".

    1 weekdjuj
    Quote 5 Up 1 Down Report
  12. Top Mathematician
    djuj

    About the paper itself, it really does look like a complicated ad hoc kind of inductive argument, almost completely elementary. Lots of one-variable inequalities to keep track of parameters. However no use of any tools such as quasirandomness, probabilistic method, entropy.....

    Well, the Hypergraph Container Method is also based on an "ad hoc" algorithm without any "non-elementary" tools as you said. Yet the method is one of the most powerful in Extremal and Probabilistic Combinatorics that resolves many long-standing open problems...

    1 weekdjuj
    Quote 0 Up 0 Down Report
  13. Top Mathematician
    paeg

    About the paper itself, it really does look like a complicated ad hoc kind of inductive argument, almost completely elementary. Lots of one-variable inequalities to keep track of parameters. However no use of any tools such as quasirandomness, probabilistic method, entropy.....

    Well, the Hypergraph Container Method is also based on an "ad hoc" algorithm without any "non-elementary" tools as you said. Yet the method is one of the most powerful in Extremal and Probabilistic Combinatorics that resolves many long-standing open problems...

    Let's see if this paper has the same influence shall we.

    1 weekpaeg
    Quote 1 Up 1 Down Report
  14. Top Mathematician
    ectn

    All this discussion about the value of the Ramsey numbers is funny.  What is the ultimate value in the study of, e.g., numbers or algebraic varieties that is lacking in the study of elementary discrete structures, like graphs and hypergraphs? Honestly, I do not have a motivated answer to this question, and a priori I cannot say that they do not deserve to be studied. There is actually some additional attraction, as for me, in the simplicity of these abstract objects.  What is their study indeed lacking, is the presence of deep, intricate and complicated structures, like the ones we encounter in the study of numbers, varieties or manifolds. This indeed can be said as making the study of the latter more appealing as the mathematics is exactly the study of hidden structures behind elementary abstract object; and most of the mathematics is naturally happening where there is the abundance of such structures. But I can not really say that such reasoning could be named by the vague term «value». At least, this does not seem motivated for me to be the reason for choosing numbers over graphs as more «valuable» objects of study. (I am not a combinatorist myself, though I have some shallow passion to combinatorics lasting from the olympiad childhood.)

    It’s obviously a taste thing. My own taste is toward algebraic number theory and neighboring subjects.

    But my answer to the question is historical. I find I’m personally quite attracted to problems considered by the 19th century greats. Of course, my tastes have been influenced by them, and I don’t at limit my interests to things they thought about. But it’s notable that they did not consider this class of problems as far as I know, which were certainly accessible to them.

    Happy to hear that I’m wrong about the history, which I only vaguely know by the way!

    1 weekectn
    Quote 1 Up 1 Down Report
  15. Top Mathematician
    euca

    About the paper itself, it really does look like a complicated ad hoc kind of inductive argument, almost completely elementary. Lots of one-variable inequalities to keep track of parameters. However no use of any tools such as quasirandomness, probabilistic method, entropy.....

    Has it been posted? Links?

    1 weekeuca
    Quote 0 Up 0 Down Report
  16. Top Mathematician
    gqfn

    Has it been posted? Links?

    It is on arXiv, check recent postings in mathCO

    1 weekgqfn
    Quote 2 Up 0 Down Report
  17. Top Mathematician
    ipge

    About the paper itself, it really does look like a complicated ad hoc kind of inductive argument, almost completely elementary. Lots of one-variable inequalities to keep track of parameters. However no use of any tools such as quasirandomness, probabilistic method, entropy.....

    Has it been posted? Links?

    Look to put it bluntly if you don't already know this, or if you don't immediately know where to look, you really should be on reddit or quora. Ideally to participate in this thread you should be looking at the more technical estimates in the paper at this point

    1 weekipge
    Quote 0 Up 4 Down Report
  18. Top Mathematician
    zglb
    [...]

    Has it been posted? Links?

    Look to put it bluntly if you don't already know this, or if you don't immediately know where to look, you really should be on reddit or quora. Ideally to participate in this thread you should be looking at the more technical estimates in the paper at this point

    Shut up you nerd

    1 weekzglb
    Quote 3 Up 1 Down Report
  19. Top Mathematician
    qomb
    [...]

    Has it been posted? Links?

    Look to put it bluntly if you don't already know this, or if you don't immediately know where to look, you really should be on reddit or quora. Ideally to participate in this thread you should be looking at the more technical estimates in the paper at this point

    Thank you for wasting five minutes of your time by writing this paragraph and wasting five minutes of my time by making me go to the arxiv. Here

    https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.09521

    1 weekqomb
    Quote 6 Up 0 Down Report
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