Talk:2320: Millennium Problems

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 04:05, 16 June 2020 by Probably not Douglas Hofstadter (talk | contribs) (Fixed an error in my comment.)
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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)

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)