350-year puzzle solved

[pendell]

Hat off to Shouryya Ray (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2150225/Shouryya-Ray-solves-puzzles-posed-Sir-Isaac-Newton-baffled-mathematicians-350-years.html). Told a particular puzzle was impossible to solve, he went and solved it. Mathematicians rock!


Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Morph Bark]

After all, genius is merely a determined intellect thinking long enough about a problem to solve it.

Awesome though!

[Karoht]

I'm not sure who said this, but as it relates to 'genius' and such...

"Talent is hitting a target better than else can. Genius is hitting a target no one else can see."

[Serpentine]

It'd be nice if the article said what puzzles have been solved, and how...

IIRC, there's a guy in Europe somewhere who refused a million dollar reward for doing something similar.

[Frog Dragon]

I did some googling on this.

Apparently, the proof hasn't been submitted to peer review. It was a paper submitted for some sort of school contest. Further, the kid did not reach first place in said contest. He reached second place. The work doesn't seem to be publicly available either.

While I don't doubt that he is very clever in the field of mathematics, it seems that this has been much overhyped.

[Rallicus]

Such a vague and stupid article.

There's virtually nothing on the "puzzles" he solved, other than the fact that Newton "set" them and that computers can solve them already.

So... Where are the puzzles? Where are the solutions?

Horrible journalism at its finest. Not to mention the forced "oh, let's find a flaw in the genius (who may not even be a genius) -- umm... he sucks at sports!"

Expect this guy to be forgotten fairly soon.

[Karoht]

Slooooooooow news day when journalism this poor makes it.

[Mx.Silver]

Given The Daily Mail's track record when it comes to science/mathematics stories I would strongly suggest that everyone take this with a very large pinch of salt. Really, it's not worth taking anything they say seriously on these subjects unless it's been confirmed by a genuinely qualified source.

[Deathslayer7]

now have him explain what it means. :smallamused:

[Othesemo]

Recent studies have suggested that reading daily mail reduces the sodium content in your blood. As such, many leading doctors suggest taking it with a grain of salt.

[Heliomance]

As pointed out in the comments, predicting the trajectory of a ball is basic kinematics and conservation of momentum, and is A-level maths.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Yeah, I was wondering about that. "Wait, you mean that thing I was going in Year 1 IB Physics Standard Level was supposed to be impossible?"

[Crow]

Recent studies have suggested that reading daily mail reduces the sodium content in your blood. As such, many leading doctors suggest taking it with a grain of salt.

Hahaha, zing!

[Manga Shoggoth]

As pointed out in the comments, predicting the trajectory of a ball is basic kinematics and conservation of momentum, and is A-level maths.

Unless the "predicting the trajectory of a ball" is a Daily Mail-esque maulingdescription of the N-Body problem.


Recent studies have suggested that reading daily mail reduces the sodium content in your blood. As such, many leading doctors suggest taking it with a grain of salt.

Depressingly true. And it's not the worst of the tabloids, either.

[Whiffet]

His solutions mean that scientists can now calculate the flight path of a thrown ball and then predict how it will hit and bounce off a wall.

Wait, isn't that stuff they teach in high school physics? :smallconfused: I admit I don't remember the physics class I took in high school very well, but I'm pretty sure we did that.

[Eloel]

Wait, isn't that stuff they teach in high school physics? :smallconfused: I admit I don't remember the physics class I took in high school very well, but I'm pretty sure we did that.

Unless he got into elasticity calculations, that IS high school stuff.

[Haruki-kun]

I would very much like to see what puzzles were solved and what the solutions were. But then again, if you put them in front of me, I wouldn't be able to understand them anyway, so that's OK. :smalltongue:

[grimbold]

I did some googling on this.

Apparently, the proof hasn't been submitted to peer review. It was a paper submitted for some sort of school contest. Further, the kid did not reach first place in said contest. He reached second place. The work doesn't seem to be publicly available either.

While I don't doubt that he is very clever in the field of mathematics, it seems that this has been much overhyped.

this

i'm doubting this right now...

[TheFallenOne]

well, I skimmed some German sources on the subject, let me give a bit more insight into the matter.

This was done for the competition 'Jugend forscht', which is the biggest and most well-known scientific competition for youngsters in Germany, and maybe Europe as a whole. He got second place in the category Mathematics/Computer Science.

What he did was provide an analytic model for parabolic flight accounting for air resistance. Allegedly everyone previously either neglected air resistance or used an approximation.
Second thing was an analytic model for an object bouncing off a wall.

This may or may not be one of the formulas. Got some nonclassical logic to go through, no time for physics. (https://www.jugend-forscht.de/images/1MAT_67_download.jpg)

German source(Jugend forscht) (https://www.jugend-forscht.de/index.php/projectsearch/detail/6038.4568)
German source 2(Jufo Dresden) (http://www.jufo-dresden.de/projekt/teilnehmer/matheinfo/m1)

[Joran]

IIRC, there's a guy in Europe somewhere who refused a million dollar reward for doing something similar.

You are indeed correct. Russian mathematician, Grigori Perelman proved the Poincaré conjecture, which was one of the Millennium Prize Problems that holds a million dollar prize.

He refused both the million dollar reward for solving the Poincaré conjecture and the Fields Medal, which is probably the most prestigious award a mathematician can win. He's definitely an odd duck and may even have quit mathematics.