[HN Gopher] Mathematicians have found a new upper limit to the R... ___________________________________________________________________ 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? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-12-11 23:00 UTC)