Talk:2320: Millennium Problems

Ironically, Randall misspells Perelman as "Perlman" in the comic but spells it correctly in the alt-text.

172.69.63.147 02:56, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps he meant Perlman the Perl-programming superhero? ;) 162.158.123.145 03:33, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

The image is projected by a projector on the ground that Cueball is apparently standing in the way of, but there's no Cueball-shaped shadow on the projected image.

There has been some controversy over the millennium prizes, given that in mathematics important results are often a product of the work of different mathematicians who are not necessarily close associates. Perelman reportedly believed that his work was a corollary to prior work by Richard S. Hamilton.

I think the idea of this comic is an extension to a question, which I've seen before in this discussion, "what if person A shows that 2 millennium problems are equivalent, and then person B proves one of them?" Should person B get both prizes, or should person A get one of them? It is easy to think of situations where it is hard to know who deserves the credit, and I think this comic takes that to a logical exteme. Probably not Douglas Hofstadter (talk) 03:59, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

"there's no Cueball-shaped shadow on the projected image." - of course not! Cueball is clearly constructed from lines - which (of course) have no width and therefore zero area and as a consequence, cannot obstruct any photons to cause a shadow to form. 172.69.70.213 02:13, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

The Wikipedia article for Grigori Perelman states the following: "The Clay Institute subsequently used Perelman's prize money to fund the 'Poincaré Chair', a temporary position for young promising mathematicians at the Paris Institut Henri Poincaré.", so no funding would be available for Randall's eighth prize. 162.158.74.61 04:21, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

By process of elimination, the matrix and the equation should represent Yang-Mills and P=NP, but which is which? The 4x4 matrix could represent the 4D unitary transformation from Yang-Mills? The equation seems to say 'Ar + (squiggles)' but I can't think of any complexity problems that might take this form. --Quantum7 (talk) 06:35, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Is "millennium problems" also a pun on "millennial problems", i.e. those issues which seem straightforward to adults but baffle the younger generation (the "millennials")? See for example comic 2165. --188.114.102.48 00:48, 17 June 2020 (UTC)