Timeline for Awfully sophisticated proof for simple facts
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
12 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| May 27 at 5:04 | comment | added | Sayan Dutta | The link Steve Huntsman has given and also another website I found attributes the proof to W. H. Schultz. However, I cannot find a proper reference for this paper. Does anyone have any idea how to find the original paper where it was published? | |
| Aug 20, 2015 at 23:09 | comment | added | ParaH2 | @FranzLemmermeyer have you got the write of him? :) | |
| Mar 14, 2012 at 10:15 | comment | added | Martin Brandenburg | So here is an argument which is not circular: $X^n-2$ is irreducible (Eisenstein). | |
| Jun 15, 2011 at 15:07 | comment | added | Franz Lemmermeyer | A student in the BeNeLux olympiad apparently proved that 56 is not a cube by observing that 56 = 4^3 - 2^3 and referring to Fermat's Last Theorem for the exponent 3. | |
| Oct 18, 2010 at 4:25 | comment | added | BCnrd | This argument is essentially circular. Indeed, we can assume $n$ is prime (just like for FLT) and then the proof of FLT first passes from a hypothetical nontrivial solution to $a^n + b^n = c^n$ for prime $n > 2$ to a suitable "Frey curve" $y^2 = x(x-a^n)(x+b^n)$ where one has to rig certain congruential and gcd conditions on $(a,b,c)$, including that $a$, $b$, and $c$ are pairwise coprime. Yet that step applied to $(p,q,q)$ is exactly what would be the "Euclid-style" proof that $2$ is not a rational $n$th power. Hmm, another disguised version of a Euclid proof. Like the Furstenberg thing...:) | |
| Oct 17, 2010 at 20:50 | comment | added | some guy on the street | it's not clear to me that FLT does not use Gauss' lemma on factoring integer polynomials. | |
| Oct 17, 2010 at 20:42 | comment | added | Greg Kuperberg | Yes, Fermat's Last Theorem is an important generalization of the fact that $2^{1/n}$ is irrational. :-) | |
| Oct 17, 2010 at 16:55 | history | edited | M T | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
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| Oct 17, 2010 at 16:50 | comment | added | muad | It's in the comment of Steve Huntsman. | |
| Oct 17, 2010 at 16:49 | history | edited | M T | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
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| Oct 17, 2010 at 16:47 | comment | added | Qfwfq | LoL ! | |
| Oct 17, 2010 at 16:44 | history | answered | M T | CC BY-SA 2.5 |