Monday, April 1, 2013

Riemann Hypothesis Appears Proven


NO, NO, NO, not THAT Riemann Hypothesis… but rather Shecky Riemann's hypothesis that there might be a review of Lance Fortnow's book, "The Golden Ticket," appearing somewhere on the internet today ;-):

http://mathtango.blogspot.com/2013/04/of-p-and-np.html

...But seriously (or, I guess not-so-seriously) there have been some wonderful April Fool's jokes from mathematicians over the years, as indicated by this American Mathematical Society post:

http://www.ams.org/samplings/this-math-month/april-fools

And here is Erik Dermaine presenting at an MAA meeting a couple years back, also employing the Riemann Hypothesis as his foil:




But the classic mathematics April Fool's example is certainly (for those old enough to remember) the Scientific American piece from April 1975 by prankster/essayist/author/philosopher/commentator/and-oh-yes-mathematician Martin Gardner (referenced in the above AMS posting). Unfortunately, so far as I'm aware, that old article is not freely available in its entirety anywhere on the Web, but his black-and-white map creation purportedly requiring five colors and disproving the "four-color theorem," is shown on a wolfram.com page here (with a 4-color solution):

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Four-ColorTheorem.html

(at the time, the four-color theorem was still an open question, though it has since been proven)

…anyway, my advice is don't trust anything you read on the Web today between now and midnight (…but of course some might say that advice holds for ANY day! ;-)


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