Timeline for Not especially famous, long-open problems which anyone can understand
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
11 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 1, 2015 at 15:21 | comment | added | Timothy Chow | @Suvrit : The irrationality of $e+\pi$ would follow from a far more general statement called Schanuel's conjecture, which in its full generality seems to be out of reach. For example Baker won a Fields medal for a partial result. | |
| Apr 1, 2015 at 1:37 | comment | added | Suvrit | @TimothyChow: can we then interpret this phenomenon as part of a larger concern, where we can say stuff with high probability, but turning the statement into a deterministic truth is out of scope? | |
| Aug 27, 2012 at 3:19 | comment | added | Timothy Chow | @Suvrit: The way I think of it, it's not so much that this particular question is exceedingly tricky; it's that we don't know that many ways to prove that a specific number is irrational. For "most" numbers that one can name, irrationality is unknown. This just happens to be one of the simplest examples. Similarly, it's not hard to write down a simple Diophantine equation or PDE whose solvability is unknown. | |
| Jul 27, 2012 at 20:59 | comment | added | Suvrit | Even though I've seen this one at many different places, what I don't know is: why is this question so exceedingly tricky? | |
| Jul 23, 2012 at 9:59 | comment | added | Vincent Beffara | That's a very nice question, but is it elementary enough? (Not the word 'rational', but the definition of $e$ and $\pi$, which should be precise enough for the question to make sense ...) | |
| Jul 3, 2012 at 14:53 | comment | added | Filippo Alberto Edoardo | I have never heard this before... | |
| Jun 22, 2012 at 19:31 | comment | added | Georges Elencwajg | Well, Timothy, I think not and it seems to be difficult to know what "most professional mathematicians are familiar with". Anyway, I think this is not important at all: the question is extremely soft and I take in the spirit of an amusing break from actual mathematics. And my only reason for answering it was that I found it amusing to write an open, extremely elementary question with 14 typographical characters ... (By the way, I have just upvoted your four fine answers) | |
| Jun 22, 2012 at 18:17 | comment | added | Timothy Chow | Popular books, I don't know, but David Feldman wrote, "I'm looking for problems that, with high probability, a mathematician working outside the particular area has never encountered." (Emphasis mine.) It feels to me that most professional mathematicians, even those not working in transcendental number theory, are familiar with this one. | |
| Jun 22, 2012 at 17:12 | comment | added | Georges Elencwajg | I'm not so sure. Which popular books, widespread textbooks or articles do you know where it is stated? | |
| Jun 22, 2012 at 14:41 | comment | added | Timothy Chow | Too famous? Most mathematicians have heard of this one, haven't they? | |
| Jun 22, 2012 at 11:35 | history | answered | Georges Elencwajg | CC BY-SA 3.0 |