<p>“i could not find a link to the math faculty’s page immediately. so without having tried anymore,i just asked the guys here to help me.”</p>
<p>You don’t see this as a problem? Is your time more valuable than ours? You seem to think so. Then again, maybe I don’t understand the situation clearly because I don’t “have the initiative” to do your work for you. </p>
<p>As for being “patronizing”, I suppose that you’re right. Most of the students on this board are nice enough that they won’t call you out for doing stupid/annoying things. I’m not really that nice.</p>
<p>Alright. Apologies then lizzardfire, to all those who had to waste their valuable time “doing my work for me”. Sorry for forcing my “stupidity” on you.</p>
<p>This isn’t meant to be rude, but these sites might give you an idea of what other posters are hinting at. People claiming to have solved extremely difficult problems in math and physics are abundant, and you’re exhibiting some of the same behaviors they do, which makes it hard to take you seriously. On a note of etiquette, you’re better off asking the professor’s permission first to send your paper. (otherwise you look like a crank) If you’d like, you could pm me your paper as a pdf, and I’d look over it.</p>
<p>Thanks for the reply jsd472. I was made aware of such websites by my roommate when I told him about it actually. And what’s more, my proof could be wrong, so that I may turn out to be a complete idiot or “crackpot”. But as far as I am concerned, I’d just like to try and request people to go through my proof. Who knows? Maybe I have hit the jackpot. It’s like playing the lottery. I mean…kinda looks alright to me. Could I pm my proof in MS Word format? Thanks.</p>
<p>Wait, can someone read this and tell me if they see the same:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Honestly, you would probably be Terence Tao status or something if you developed this. I.e. you would not be asking about Olympiads, you’d be one of the most brilliant people in the world if you could develop such a proof. Realize that it baffled mathematicians for centuries, and the proof developed requires immense technical machinery. </p>
<p>A professor at my university who was responsible for the conjecture paving the way to Fermat has mentioned that he has received many, many flawed proofs of Fermat’s Last Theorem before. </p>
<p>This strikes me as heavily fishy.</p>
<p>EDIT: If such a thing were erroneous, and in fact hardly up to the sophistication of the proof, honestly the professors you email will be extremely irritated.</p>
<p>^I definitely don’t buy it either. The people who came up with it took years and proving all these sub things necessary for the entire proof. No math teacher at my school can understand the entire proof, so I doubt that your math teacher would be able to understand and validate the complex math (it took a few college math professors a long time to confirm Wiles’ proof). If you came up with something relatively simple, you are wrong, as tons of great math minds have attempted the proof, so I’m sure they would have tried whatever method you came up with.</p>
<p>Hey guys thanks for replying.
Your criticism is understandable. I would treat a stupid kid in some cormer of the world and thinking too much of himself similarly. I definitely do not claim to be a Terence Tao (though I am by far the youngest member of my grade, and get the highest marks in mathematics, if that counts ).
However, you have a choice here. You could eitehr just dismiss me as an attention-seeking jerk, which is understandable, or you could pm me your mail ids, and i could mail my proof to you guys. I have mailed my proof to a few people in CC, and got a couple of replies. None of them could find a fault with it, and are just waiting for Mr. Flach’s reply to make their statements official.
My proof is nowhere as complex as Wiles’, and uses just trigonometry, to be frank. I know! Trigonometry and number theory form a strange combination, but that is how my proof works.
I hope that before dismissing me as rubbish, you would give me a small chance.
I may be completely wrong, and may turn out to be an idiot not fit to even apply to prestigious universities such as this. That is a glaring possibility. But I am too much of a maths and science freak to not try to solve the greatest maths problem ever. Ambitious? You bet!</p>
<p>(i’m jsd’s friend)
i can find a flaw,
just because you say c < a + b for one of the three numbers doesn’t mean they necessarily form a triangle,
like take c = 1, a = 5, b = 11
all three directions have to work and you’ve only done one</p>
<p>you have a lot of enthusiasm though, obviously you’re very passionate about math if you try to solve hard math problems in your spare time. so keep trying! the more math you do, the more proofs you’ll make that really work. and don’t shy away from the hard problems either, if everyone thought they had to be a genius to prove stuff nothing would ever get proven.</p>
<p>and also, the other thing i really liked about your proof was you used ideas from a bunch of different branches of math. a lot of scientists only use methods from their own field and that really limits them. stay interdisciplinary and keep an open mind :)</p>
<p>hey. thanks for replying fixiz2. Actually it works all 3 ways. if c^n= a^n + b^n, then c<a+b. Now a^n = c^n-b^n, which is less than (c+b)^n. Hence, a<c+b. Similarly, b^n=c^n-a^n, which is less than (c+a)^n. Hence, b<c+a. With these three triangle inequalities, one can form a triangle.</p>
<p>ya. i got his mail. i think the number of mistakes has come down to 1, and he makes a very interesting point. i’ve got to think about it. but it’s not fundamental to the proof; only asks me to narrow the range of possible values from real numbers to natural numbers.</p>
<p>I’m not trying to dismiss you exactly, OP, and your enthusiasm is good, but frankly you should probably wait for a professor to comment.</p>
<p>It seems to me very unlikely that a proof involving less than extreme machinery could have not been thought of if it existed, given the number of people who tried this. </p>
<p>Consider one comment, however, which may benefit you: regardless of whether your proof is flawed or not, if you’re a true math enthusiast, I would say you should slightly refine your attitude towards math if you want a career in something mathematical. That is to say, you should spend the early stages learning the immense technical beasts of machinery required to think in the framework of modern math, rather than trying to attack glamorous problems. In a sense, Fermat probably isn’t even important by itself – even if you’re cleverer than most, <em>DEEP</em> questions, not clever questions, tend to be what mathematicians try to answer. There is so much to learn, and if you’re ahead of the game, you could spend extra time reading several topics, and really truly discover the subfield you adore. Most people kind of have to go with their basic gut feel by the time they do their Ph.D’s, and may not have as specialized an idea of what they love. </p>
<p>I assure you that you’ll find the mathematicians like Terence Tao would agree – even if an elementary proof of Fermat were discovered, the way Wiles and those who helped developed their theories contributes something to this world far more beautiful than Fermat’s statement itself – a wealth of ideas fitting together in a vast puzzle. A proof is most beautiful if it renders all the ideas it brings up natural, in my opinion. And to develop such a beautiful proof takes considerable reflection on the nature of the objects of study.</p>
<p>No, the number of mistakes is not down to 1, you just misinterpreted me. Furthermore, whether it’s over the integers or reals is fundamental to the proof. If I can make a, b, and c real, without any misstep in logic in the proof, then there’s a problem.</p>
<p>oh ok. I’m sorry I thought the other 2 problems had been cleared (regarding the definition and ‘C’), but nevertheless. And as for the real numbers thing, I think I shall be replying soon. But frankly, although you do give a counter-example, you do not show me which part of the proof is invalid. Appreciate that input.</p>
<p>let me give you an example, because i forgot to add this onto my previous post
take the equation 3x + 6y = 10
this equation has no integer solutions [[source](<a href=“Diophantine equation - Wikipedia”>Diophantine equation - Wikipedia)</a>]
but if you open it to all real numbers it’s trivial, just set x = 0 and y = 10/6,
and in fact there are infinitely many of these solutions</p>
<p>Though I still believe you made a wrong assumption somewhere in your proof (wherever that ends up being), you have shown me one thing regardless of whether you are correct or not; you are a very enthusiastic and bright math student. I think you are in over your head with this proof, but your understanding of principles you’ve already been exposed to is very solid for a HS junior. Assuming you end up being wrong, I don’t think it would be a good idea to submit this “proof” to the admissions people simply because it’s wrong. Try a simpler proof, but one that still requires relatively complex math, and submit that come next winter. If I were an adcom, I’d admit you, if only for your passion, motivation, and intelligence. Good luck!</p>
).