h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

How about 1^infinity? *s and hides*

Oh I'm with you on pure maths, though like I said topology's my bag, though elliptic curves do look kind of interesting.

how about the differential equation I posted to the other conversation? That's pretty hard.

dave

Yeah, I saw that differential equation. Solving it is probably best done numerically, unless I've missed an analytical solution...

that's too bad, I could really use the analytical solution. Oh well.

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Pleased to hear that, Andy. I've just begun studying complex analysis.

I found Group theory difficult. So many odd, seemingly disconnected facts to remember about the properties of different groups.

Number theory is my personal favourite.

me[Andy]g: "What's the 3n+1 thing you're talking about, GTB?"


A565788 is the Edited Entry on the 3n+1 conjecture, a notorious unsolved number theory problem. I've come back to it again and again over the last 15 years, and I hope I can work on it for my PhD. Erdos said of it that "Mathematics is not yet ready for such problems."


GTB

I think the '3n+1' problem that GT was alluding to might be this one:

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/CollatzProblem.html

..So if you fancy solving it, you can win $1000! Wow!

It doesn't mention that the only reason that rewards are put up for things like this is because some of the greatest minds in the field couldn't work it out!

Well personally I've been struggling along recently with matrices, vector spaces and eigen-things, so that's my personal choice. Universally, though, I reckon that a lot of the prime number theorems and other number theory stuff has to be some of the toughest.

GSYHIAP :@)

oops, simulpost!

Ah yes, that's what I thought it was, but I couldn't remember exactly. Thanks GTB!

Cleo - group theory may be difficult, but stick with it and you'll be able to do Galois Theory, which is great!

Anything involving the Axiom of Choice is difficult, IMO. What's that, Axiomatic Set Theory?

Pure maths rocks. Algebra and Number theory rock even more (functional analysis can just go and lick a fish for all I care...and that includes this stupid Lebesgue person, who should ever have been born!).

Pity that I'm not particularly good at either alg or nt, though *sigh*

All the answers show it is not a specific area.
I would say "the parts you can never understand".

i just sat down and worked out a number for the 3n+1 thing, anyone who is counting, 95465447 ends with 1, i did this on excell to save a little bit of time, we should try and figure a way to write a formula for it. with 95465447 i went through 464 caluculations to arrive at 1, it took about an hour, maybe ill do some more tommorow.

with that thing, say u have 5 = 16, 8, 4, 2, 1. does this mean that all the numbers that you come to are going to equal one? so for my 95465447 calcultion, all the numbers inbetween 95465447 and 1 that i saw will go to one?

Sure, if you start with a number, and it eventually reaches 1, then any number along the trajectory that you followed will definitely reach 1 as well, in fewer steps.

Also your original number multiplied by any power of 2 will reach one. And if any of those products are 1 greater than a multiple of three, you'll get additional sets of numbers that are bound to reach one...

sweet, i have made a formula to disprove the thing, the only problem is that the formula has 4 intergers, 1 of them the answer, so im gonna have a field time trying to work it out, but when i do, yipee.

i have got a pretty good mathematical ability i think, i thought up the formula during a break period at work and there were people talking loudly, i didnt even have a pen and paper, i worked it out in my head, and wrote it down later, not one of the 5 people who have seen it have been able to understand what it actually means, even after i explain it to them.