Want to Take On An Open/Unsolved Problem? 276
CexpTretical writes "The accumulation and focusing of knowledge may be the noblest use or purpose of the internet. There are plenty of open or unsolved problems left for this generation. Why not spend some of your time in the dark of this winter working on one of the big problems facing humanity? Open problems exists in almost every field of study. Wikipedia maintains a small list of them and at least one international group called the Union of International Associations maintains a database of open problems." Which problem do you want to see cracked first? Are you already working on one of these big issues?
Distributed computing... (Score:4, Insightful)
Log into web site, check out work unit, complete unit, check in results, rinse and repeat.
There is an assumption in this sort of thing that there is a large enough untapped pool of relevant expertise to make this sort of job distribution effective. Is this actually just a study on whether or not that assumption is correct, or has someone really made that assumption and is expecting success?
I have troubles believing that this is really an effective means for tackling some of the listed problems.
Not "easy" but "facile". (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't believe that got modded "Informative" when the exact opposite is true. People, "Informative" does not mean "echoing my own beliefs".
Let's just look at the first empty thing said:
No larger than necessary
That's a pointless truism. In this context, proper=necessary. So, you have essentially said that the proper size is the proper size, giving zero information. Even a fascist believes that the state shouldn't be larger than necessary — they just believe that a totalitarian police state is necessary for order.
Perhaps if someone asks you what size USB connector is the proper one to go in a certain digital camera you will answer "One no larger or smaller than necessary". What a way to avoid answering a question whilst convincing airheads that you have done so!
Re:How about somebody taking on the problem of ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Einstein had a doctorate in physics, which included all of the grounding he needed to understand the problems of Brownian motion (for which he won the Nobel prize and which is to this day his most-cited work) and the issues with electro-dynamics that led him to relativity. He started with an excellent, formal, disciplined grounding in his subject of interest. His position as a patent clerk was useful because it gave him the time to work undisturbed by actual job duties (patent office employment back then not being much different from in our own time.)
While self-taught geniuses do exist (Ramanujan, for example) the vast majority of substantive contributions to any field are made by people with good formal grounding in that field. It doesn't matter how smart you are, nor how much of the literature you have read: formal education will help you learn the disciplines of mind and modes of thought that are the jumping-off point for new work. Nor does learning these things stifle creativity if you really understand them, as Einstein did.
Re:It's official. (Score:2, Insightful)
-A mathematics grad student
Re:That's easy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:colours! (Score:3, Insightful)
A lot of people have wondered this (it's a fairly famous philosophical question), and I think the answer is... it's not a valid question to even ask. There's no such thing as "color", it's simply what we choose to name the signals that come from our eyes. It's like asking whether two people perceive the sensation of a needle prick versus a blunt strike in the same way. Do you percieve what I think of as a needle prick as a blunt strike? Of course not, because we've named the physical sensations as what they are -- sharp pain versus dull pain.
Same with color. The color "blue" is perceived as "that which causes the blue photoreceptors to be stimulated". There is nothing that literally turns "blue" in your mind that might turn "green" in my mind. We both have blue and green photoreceptors, and we both name the signals in the same way.
Bottom line, the whole question means nothing.
I solved one! (Score:1, Insightful)
Answer: It didn't. Entropy is Boltzmann's constant times the log of the number of microstates consistent with the given macrostate. The macrostate "the universe" can only be in one microstate at any time, the microstate the universe is actually in. Any other microstate would be a hypothetical alternate universe, not "the universe." Thus the entropy of the universe is and will always be zero.
The same goes for any actual object. Entropy is a property of *states*, not objects, and is purely a matter of how those states are defined.
Re:One of the problems taken from wikipedia in eco (Score:2, Insightful)
A non-mathematician has no shot at proving FLT or Poincare or the Riemann hypothesis.
I think the point is that with super-abundant resources, there would simply be more mathematicians. At present, intelligent people who would have a shot are going into fields like business, law, accountancy - fields where they can make money now. Maths can't compete with the salaries here, and unless you prove one of the dozen problems with a giant award waiting, you're not going to be a millionaire.
If resources were enough that this just didn't matter, I think you'd naturally get a lot more people involved in this sort of thinking profession with no guaranteed payoff at the end.