Tag Archives: Tim Gowers

Possible future Polymath projects (2009, 2021)

Posted on January 29, 2021 by Gil Kalai

What will be our next polymath project? A polymath project (Wikipedia) is a collaboration among mathematicians to solve important and difficult mathematical problems by coordinating many mathematicians to communicate with each other on finding the best route to the solution. … Continue reading →

Posted in Combinatorics, Mathematics over the Internet, Open discussion | Tagged , , | 30 Comments

This question from Tim Gowers will certainly cheeer you up! and test your intuition as well!

Posted on October 18, 2020 by Gil Kalai

I've rolled a die and not looked at it yet. The statement, "If the number I rolled equals 2+2 then it equals 5," is … — Timothy Gowers (@wtgowers) October 18, 2020 Here is a tweet from Tim Gowers  It … Continue reading →

Posted in Logic and set theory, Philosophy, Probability | Tagged | 12 Comments

The Brown-Erdős-Sós 1973 Conjecture

Posted on January 8, 2020 by Gil Kalai

Greetings from Oberwolfach.  This week, there is a great meeting here on combinatorics. In this post I want to state the Brown-Erdős-Sós conjecture and one of its variants. The trigger was a beautiful talk I heard from Lior Gishboliner on … Continue reading →

Posted in Combinatorics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

News (mainly polymath related)

Posted on January 20, 2016 by Gil Kalai

Update (Jan 21) j) Polymath11 (?) Tim Gowers’s proposed a polymath project on Frankl’s conjecture. If it will get off the ground we will have (with polymath10) two projects running in parallel which is very nice. (In the comments Jon Awbrey gave … Continue reading →

Posted in Combinatorics, Conferences, Mathematics over the Internet, Polymath10, Polymath3, Updates | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

Why is Mathematics Possible: Tim Gowers’s Take on the Matter

Posted on June 19, 2013 by Gil Kalai

In a previous post I mentioned the question of why is mathematics possible. Among the interesting comments to the post, here is a comment by Tim Gowers: “Maybe the following would be a way of rephrasing your question. We know … Continue reading →

Posted in Open discussion, Philosophy, What is Mathematics | Tagged , , , | 22 Comments

Mittag-Leffler Institute and Yale, Winter 2005; Test your intuition: Who Played the Piano?

Posted on March 21, 2013 by Gil Kalai

This is a little “flashback” intermission in my posts about my debate with Aram Harrow. This time I try to refer to Cris Moore’s question regarding  the motivation for my study. For the readers it gives an opportunity to win a … Continue reading →

Posted in Computer Science and Optimization, Controversies and debates, Physics, Test your intuition | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

Knighted for Services to Mathematics

Posted on June 17, 2012 by Gil Kalai

The Birthday and Diamond Jubilee Honours 2012 was released on 16 June 2012 in the United Kingdom and Tim Gowers was knighted for “services to mathematics”! So I suppose Tim is now becoming “Sir William.” It is possible that the Queen mainly … Continue reading →

Posted in Updates | Tagged | 3 Comments

The Internet, Journals and all that.

Posted on November 3, 2011 by Gil Kalai

Tim Gowers wrote an interesting post where he proposed in surprising many details an Internet mechanism (mixing ingredients from the arXive, blogs, MathOverflow and polymath projects) to replace Journals. Noam Nisan (who advocated similar changes over the years) wrote an interesting related … Continue reading →

Posted in Academics, Mathematics over the Internet | Tagged , | 4 Comments

False Beliefs in Mathematics

Posted on June 6, 2010 by Gil Kalai

Test your intuition: For two n by n matrices A and B, is it always the case that tr(ABAB) = tr(ABBA)?

Posted in Mathematics over the Internet, Test your intuition | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

Polymath Reflections

Posted on March 17, 2010 by Gil Kalai

Polymath is a collective open way of doing mathematics. It  started over Gowers’s blog with the polymath1 project that was devoted to the Density Hales Jewett problem. Since then we  had Polymath2 related to Tsirelson spaces in Banach space theory , an  intensive Polymath4 devoted … Continue reading →

Posted in Mathematics over the Internet, Open discussion | Tagged , | 4 Comments