I was asked in comments about the claimed P != NP proof I posted about last week. This NYT article has a reasonable summary of current opinion. Basically the "proof" appears to have some serious problems. Unfortunately the author may have trouble accepting this verdict.
As for what a proof would mean, the bare fact alone would not change much since many people already assume it is true. However it is likely a valid proof would depend on much greater insight into the theory computation than we currently have.
Raw data: A cautionary tale
7 hours ago
Hi James,
ReplyDeleteI ended up using your proof of the bound on the number of little disks contained in the big disk. It was definitely the clearest and most straight-forward.
What's your email address? I'll cite you as a personal communication, and send you a copy of the paper, if you're interested.
Email me at heebie dot geebie at gmail.
Thanks for the help!