Math in the News
Practitioners Debate Role of Computers in Pure Mathematics
A Simons Science News feature reprinted in Wired frames the ongoing and at times heated debate over the rightful role of computers in pure mathematics.
On the one hand, there's Thomas Hales, who used a computer to prove the 400-year-old Kepler conjecture. He "envisions a future in which computers are so adept at higher-order reasoning that they will be able to prove huge chunks of a theorem at a time with little—or no—human guidance."
Other mathematicians, though, agree with University of California at Berkeley professor Constantin Teleman, who avoids using computers in his research in algebraic geometry and topology. He views computational mathematics as a sort of surrender:
There's an element of a notion of failure, I think, when you resort to a computer proof. It’s saying: 'We can’t really do it, so we have to just let the machine run.'
Read the full story at either Simons Science News or Wired.