Timeline for Modern results that are widely known, yet which at the time were ignored, not accepted or criticized
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
40 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Feb 10, 2022 at 16:57 | comment | added | sno | This SMBC comic seems relevant: smbc-comics.com/comic/how-math-works | |
| Feb 9, 2022 at 15:50 | comment | added | Timothy Chow | @alhal I should also mention that Hadwiger's conjecture is still open, and is the subject of considerable ongoing research. This research relies on the four-color theorem. For example, the proof of the $k=6$ case of Hadwiger's conjecture explicitly relies on the four-color theorem. | |
| Feb 8, 2022 at 16:48 | history | edited | Robert Bassett | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
corrected mispelling of Steve Wright's name.
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| Feb 8, 2022 at 8:18 | answer | added | Guillaume Aubrun | timeline score: 11 | |
| Feb 8, 2022 at 2:36 | comment | added | Terry Tao | Somewhat related: mathoverflow.net/questions/341959/… | |
| Feb 7, 2022 at 23:24 | answer | added | Oleg Eroshkin | timeline score: 6 | |
| Feb 7, 2022 at 19:42 | review | Close votes | |||
| Feb 9, 2022 at 2:18 | |||||
| Feb 7, 2022 at 17:39 | answer | added | Brian Hopkins | timeline score: 3 | |
| Feb 7, 2022 at 17:36 | answer | added | Stefan Kohl♦ | timeline score: 0 | |
| Feb 7, 2022 at 15:46 | comment | added | Timothy Chow | @alhal To a first approximation, I use zero results in my day-to-day activity. I don't even use calculus. That doesn't mean it's not useful to somebody. I suspect that your own area of math doesn't require doing a lot of programming and heavy computation on a day-to-day basis. Am I right? A computational graph theorist who does a lot of experimental mathematics daily may have a different perspective on how useful a graph algorithm is. | |
| Feb 7, 2022 at 8:45 | answer | added | Roland Bacher | timeline score: 6 | |
| Feb 7, 2022 at 8:11 | comment | added | alhal | I do like the example of Wantzel's results though - even though it is also not "useful" and "stands alone". I'm conflicted about these types of results that are not "useful" and have been overlooked; perhaps a new question should be created that tailors to them specifically | |
| Feb 7, 2022 at 8:07 | comment | added | alhal | @TimothyChow But still, my question remains: Where do you in your day-to-day mathematical activity, really need to rely on such an algorithm? To take the example of the umbral calculus posted below, which I feel is a good one: This is a workhorse that is constantly used in a particular area of mathematics to derive results; the four-colouring algorithm is not (as far as I know, but I don't know much about graph theory). In this precise sense I meant that is it not "useful" and that it "stands alone". | |
| Feb 7, 2022 at 6:15 | history | edited | Gerry Myerson | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
typo in title
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| Feb 6, 2022 at 20:19 | answer | added | coudy | timeline score: 4 | |
| Feb 6, 2022 at 19:49 | comment | added | Timothy Chow | @alhal The proof of the four-color theorem yields an algorithm for finding a four-coloring of a planar graph. See for example, Efficiently four-coloring planar graphs by Robertson et al. Now you could argue that for practical purposes, there are simpler, heuristic algorithms that run faster and that usually find a four-coloring. But the guaranteed-to-work, quadratic-time algorithm relies on details of the proof of the four-color theorem. | |
| Feb 6, 2022 at 18:11 | history | edited | ThiKu | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
deleted 13 characters in body
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| Feb 6, 2022 at 18:09 | answer | added | polfosol | timeline score: 11 | |
| Feb 6, 2022 at 14:27 | answer | added | Timothy Chow | timeline score: 21 | |
| Feb 6, 2022 at 14:16 | comment | added | Timothy Chow | This one fails your 99-year criterion, but I think is otherwise an excellent example: Why was Wantzel overlooked for a century? The changing importance of an impossibility result. | |
| Feb 6, 2022 at 13:58 | answer | added | Timothy Chow | timeline score: 23 | |
| Feb 6, 2022 at 13:52 | comment | added | Timothy Chow | @SamHopkins Eigenvectors from eigenvalues is an interesting case, but I think the main issue there was that it failed to become "widely known" as stated in the title question. So maybe it's an answer to a slightly different question. The same might be true of the Gaussian correlation inequality, though I'm less sure what I think about that one. | |
| Feb 6, 2022 at 13:11 | comment | added | alhal | @lhf I would say no, because (at least in my ignorance, perhaps someone can educate me) I feel that the results is not really useful. It seems to stand alone, as a milestone in terms of using computers and in terms of the question being settled. It is not used over and over again as a in various proofs. (But, again, I may be wrong about this.) | |
| Feb 6, 2022 at 12:23 | comment | added | lhf | Does the proof of the four-color theorem qualify? | |
| Feb 6, 2022 at 4:14 | history | became hot network question | |||
| Feb 6, 2022 at 1:48 | comment | added | mathworker21 | Proof of Gaussian correlation inequality. | |
| Feb 5, 2022 at 23:34 | answer | added | KConrad | timeline score: 23 | |
| Feb 5, 2022 at 23:10 | history | made wiki | Post Made Community Wiki by Asaf Karagila♦ | ||
| Feb 5, 2022 at 22:21 | comment | added | Sam Hopkins | Another possibility of an "ignored" result is "eigenvectors from eigenvalues": arxiv.org/abs/1908.03795. | |
| Feb 5, 2022 at 22:08 | comment | added | alhal | @SamHopkins Feel free to post it! | |
| Feb 5, 2022 at 22:05 | history | edited | Alessandro Della Corte |
edited tags
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| Feb 5, 2022 at 21:49 | comment | added | Sam Hopkins | The work of Heegner is mentioned elsewhere on similar MO questions, but I believe it fits here too. | |
| Feb 5, 2022 at 21:46 | answer | added | Will Sawin | timeline score: 37 | |
| Feb 5, 2022 at 21:45 | answer | added | Alessandro Della Corte | timeline score: 4 | |
| Feb 5, 2022 at 21:31 | answer | added | Sam Hopkins | timeline score: 13 | |
| Feb 5, 2022 at 21:27 | answer | added | Carlo Beenakker | timeline score: 27 | |
| Feb 5, 2022 at 21:05 | history | edited | alhal | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 213 characters in body
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| Feb 5, 2022 at 20:49 | comment | added | alhal | @WillSawin Being published in an unusual form makes it easy for the mathematical community to misunderstand or ignore the result (even if the mathematical community is not at fault here), so yes, I would like to count those results | |
| Feb 5, 2022 at 20:26 | comment | added | Will Sawin | Do you want to count results that were ignored, not for any real fault of the mathematical community, but because they were published in an unusual way, like the Selberg integral? | |
| Feb 5, 2022 at 20:14 | history | asked | alhal | CC BY-SA 4.0 |