Circle packing conjecture disproven

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Two Students Unravel a Widely Believed Math Conjecture | Quanta Magazine

Mathematicians thought they were on the cusp of proving a conjecture about the ancient structures known as Apollonian circles. But a summer project would lead to its downfall.

www.quantamagazine.org

 

[Tom McAndrew]

Not your type of math, @LionJim (I believe), but still an interesting read

 

[LionJim]

Not your type of math, @LionJim (I believe), but still an interesting read

Lol, no. Good for those young people, they tackled an extremely ambitious project and it paid off.

I’m a good technician, if I say so myself, but I don’t have the needed level of creativity to do something like this, never did. My grad school proofs could be very intricate and clever, but I never was one to come up with good, original mathematics. (My dissertation was a calculation in homology. Original, yes, but the end was always going to be there.) One of Hilbert’s students told him that he was quitting mathematics to become a poet. “Good decision. You aren’t imaginative enough to be a mathematician.” Good story.

 

[Woodpecker]

When did they change it to be called circle packing ... oh wait, nevemind

 

[Lion84]

I was told there would be no math.

 

[manatree]

@LionJim

I saw this new book announcement polluting my email. Amazon claims that it's for 12 years and up, so I might be able to understand this one. Might.

Is Math Real? How Simple Questions Lead Us to Mathematics’ Deepest Truths
By Eugenia Cheng

 

[LionJim]

@LionJim

I saw this new book announcement polluting my email. Amazon claims that it's for 12 years and up, so I might be able to understand this one. Might.

Is Math Real? How Simple Questions Lead Us to Mathematics’ Deepest Truths
By Eugenia Cheng

Cheng is primarily a logician (she’s an academic descendant of Alan Turing), which presumably explains the question she asks in her title. (No “normal” mathematician would ask that question; we just do the math.) It might be a worthwhile read for a layman, but for me it’s a hard pass. I’ve tried to read Wittgenstein, who asked these sort of questions, got nowhere.