[HN Gopher] Mathematicians have found a new upper limit to the R...
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Mathematicians have found a new upper limit to the Ramsey number
Author : georgehill
Score : 202 points
Date : 2023-12-10 08:46 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.quantamagazine.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.quantamagazine.org)
| georgehill wrote:
| I submitted this link 1 day ago, but I am not sure why it's on
| the front page now, as it says I posted it just 1 hour ago
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=georgehill
| bmacho wrote:
| Moderators often resubmit submissions with fake time. (I pretty
| much hate this. I don't like people lying things about me, like
| I was using HN at a time I wasn't. Be aware of this.)
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| Why?
| enriquto wrote:
| It's an invasion of privacy. Imagine that a post appears
| under your name with a date/time where you are supposed to
| be working. If you are paid by somebody else, this may get
| you into trouble, or even fired.
| davnicwil wrote:
| In fairness in such an extreme situation it seems likely
| there would be a conversation where you'd have the
| opportunity to explain.
|
| If there weren't, well, probably you're better off?
| avgcorrection wrote:
| > If there weren't, well, probably you're better off?
|
| That's for the person to do something with or not. :) Not
| something that moderators should intervene in indirectly.
| chongli wrote:
| How do you explain if you're not aware of the policy?
| carbotaniuman wrote:
| There is no privacy invasion here (that isn't even the
| right argument). If you think that HN misrepresents the
| data then sure that's a valid concern, but it's not a
| privacy invasion. But really, the HN date is when it got
| exposed initially.
| sfink wrote:
| It does suggest that an "(updated)" marker would not go
| amiss.
|
| I won't explain my justification, since I'm supposed to
| be working right now. ;-)
| skeaker wrote:
| Fortunately the moderation here isn't a faceless monolith
| and if you email them they would most likely be happy to
| cooperate with your concerns about this.
| willy_k wrote:
| You've definitely described an invasion of privacy, just
| not one perpetrated by HN.
| leeoniya wrote:
| pretty sure it's because HN's position/rank algorithm is
| heavily weighted towards post age. so if it got upmodded
| but retained yesterday's timestamp it would not get much
| hang time.
|
| (speaking as someone with a few previous second-chance
| submissions)
| blackshaw wrote:
| As dang explains in one of the linked posts, it's because
| if they don't do it, the discussion usually becomes "how is
| this on the front page when it's 2 days old?" instead of
| discussing the topic at hand.
|
| Of course in this case we're now discussing the opposite
| question and still not discussing the topic at hand.
| scrlk wrote:
| dang explains the mechanics behind the second-chance pool here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308
|
| Regarding timestamp inconsistencies:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19774614
| georgehill wrote:
| Wow, this is super cool! Thanks!
| tommiegannert wrote:
| I wonder what would happen to Reddit if moderators could
| order posts manually (other than stickies).
| tromp wrote:
| > Can we improve 3.993 to 3.9? Maybe to 3.4? And what about 3?"
|
| Pi is feeling a little left out. If that turns out to be the true
| asymptotic behavior of Ramsey numbers, it would make one of the
| worst ever methods for computing digits of pi...
| OJFord wrote:
| I thought it was entertainingly specific, and fortunately the
| abstract at least [0] was slightly less immediately beyond me
| than I feared, to satisfy my curiosity a bit:
|
| The main proof is an improvement to the 4^k bound (standing
| since 1935) to (4-eps)^k _for some epsilon_.
|
| They additionally prove (I guess they have properties that make
| it slightly easier than other rounder/bigger numbers?) it for
| eps=2^-10 and eps=2^-7 specifically.
|
| (3.993 then comes from the latter, 4 minus it gives 3.9921 and
| change, but of course you need to round that _up_ to 3.993 in
| order to say it 's a bound: it's not definitely less than
| 3.992, since it could lie between the two.)
|
| So yes maybe/it probably can be improved from 3.993, because
| that's a bit of a tangential claim anyway - the main thing is
| that it's 'some non-zero amount less than 4'^k.
|
| (But mostly yes it was beyond me, I won't pretend to be able to
| even attempt to understand the proof really.)
|
| [0]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.09521
| itscodingtime wrote:
| Can someone explain to me why changing the top right and bottom
| right edges to blue in the R(3) = 6 does not work ?
| davidnc wrote:
| There's still a red clique. And changing any of those 3 to blue
| crates a blue clique.
| itscodingtime wrote:
| Ah, thanks. I see it now.
| quijoteuniv wrote:
| Do i get this right? This discovery let you calculate the minimun
| amount of grafana dashboards you need to monitor a kubernetes
| cluster or the minimun amount of dasboards behind you in a
| linkedin photo to look cool enough?
| dpflan wrote:
| Yes, exactly. Care to share an example of what you're talking
| about? You may have found a new realm for research...
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| It also how the EKS (Entropy Khaos Service) returns a timestamp
| representing the end of the universe.
| gafferongames wrote:
| Finally, omega star will get their shit together.
| pas wrote:
| only theoretically, and only if UP=nP, in practice we know that
| k = 8s (or in smaller abelian deployment rings k = 3s = 0s mod
| 443)
| IceMichael wrote:
| I get that this is really interesting and I surely enjoyed the
| read... But has it really any practical implications? I mean, in
| a sense, there are so many mathematical riddles... Anyways, I'm
| fine to ignore this question. Very nice!
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| Before someone jumps at you for daring to ask this question...
| yes, there are many many math riddles, and indeed not all are
| equally important, and we may not always know in advance which
| ones are.
|
| Some turn out to be more "productive" in the sense of leading
| to development of techniques, connections to other fields, etc.
|
| Ramsey theory (the riddle discussed in the article) is one of
| these, here is just a short list of nontrivial applications to
| CS (admittedly, mostly to theory of CS):
|
| https://www.cs.umd.edu/~gasarch/TOPICS/ramsey/ramsey.html
| treprinum wrote:
| Not sure, one can just state that chaos does not exist as with
| a huge number of items (10^200+) some sort of a rule always
| emerges.
| sfink wrote:
| Heh. I was not prepared for the punchline that this "only" goes
| from 4^k to 3.993^k. I mean, they're creating a whole new form of
| proof that will almost certainly allow further decreases, and
| they generously aren't holding back until they make a bigger
| dent, but it just intuitively feels like the true value has got
| to be way, way smaller.
|
| (On a side note, I am so often stunned by the quality of articles
| on Quanta Magazine. I sorta thought this type of quality writing
| was dead and gone from the freely accessible web.)
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > Quanta Magazine
|
| Their YT videos are also top notch.
| onetimeuse92304 wrote:
| I think you are possibly missing the possibility that going
| from 4^k to 3.993^k might involve learning something new about
| the problem. Frequently learning something new is more
| important than the absolute magnitude of the improvement.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| > might involve learning something new about the problem
|
| I think that's almost literally what sfink said though:
|
| > > they're creating a whole new form of proof that will
| almost certainly allow further decreases
| geodel wrote:
| > I sorta thought this type of quality writing was dead and
| gone from the freely accessible web
|
| It is working because its funded by Hedge fund founder
| billionaire/mathematician and they are not looking for
| subscription revenues (yet).
| julianeon wrote:
| That explains it. I also wondered how the ad-supported
| Buzzfeed style web could make the money math work out. Its
| good to know that's not the source.
| tecleandor wrote:
| Oh, I didn't notice it's Jim Simmons's. I saw his opening
| lecture at 2014's ICM in Seoul, before the Fields Medals.
| There were lots of questions about how to make money, even
| when he previously stated that he wouldn't answer any of
| those.
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| Contemporaneous thread from the Cambridge edition of the seminar
| https://nitter.net/wtgowers/status/1636632071069106181#m
|
| (They celebrated with a pint)
| baidifnaoxi wrote:
| Im not a mathematician, but does this have potential application
| in some Neural Networks and such where dangerous connections or
| isolated information flows could exist?
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(page generated 2023-12-11 23:00 UTC)