300 year equation

S

science man

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Hey guys I heard there's an equation that take's us humans 300 years to do. Anyone know it?
 
He means the solution to a problem that's existed 300 years, not 300 years to do it. Oh, and it's not true, he "rediscovered" an old equation...then the media hyped it. There's still no equation where you can plug in a value and arrive at a bernoulli number.
 
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Well if you tried to solve the exact equations for many physical systems then yes it would take well over 300 years for any individual or computer to solve. I mean if you wanted to solve the exact quantum mechanical properties of 1g of matter that would mean solving a differential equation (Schrodinger equation) with around 10^23 particles. And each of these particles has a pairwise interaction with every other particle.

Even if you could get a solution it would take an equally long time to interpret it. Considering that at the moment as far as I know for the best computational methods, the computing time is proportional to the number of particles and it has currently been done for a few hundred atoms thenn you can see 10^23 particles would take a long time.
 
Perhaps the OP was referring to Fermat's last theorem, which was posed in 1637 but wasn't proven until 1995.
 
I think it was referring to an equation that would provide Bernoulli numbers by plugging the step value into a function.
 
The joys of google:

$$ B_m=\sum_{k=1}^{m+1}\sum_{v=1}^{k+1}(-1)^{v+1}\binom{k-1}{v-1}\frac{v^m}k $$

This is one of many. The most obvious formula comes from a "multiply-differentiate-limit" approach to the generating function.
 
Oh, ok. It's not that I didn't believe you... it's just nice to provide proof when you make a claim. I, too, have found a few closed form expressions when searching Google.
 
The article says it has previously been solved. I think it just means its been a known but non-trivial result for 300 years, hence 'a challenge'. It's oddly worded though.

Nothing is wrong with a Taylor series approach. Almost any n'th number closed formula is going to involve summations, else you'd just have a polynomial and most n'th number formulas are for infinite sequences and often explicitly stated polynomials don't cut it.
 
CheskiChips said:
Okay, then I don't know what the article is about.
http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2009/05...300-year-old-math-problem/UPI-34321243527091/
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From the (short) article:
The Local said while the Bernoulli numbers formula had previously been solved, Altoumaimi's work was praised as a result of his young age and educational level.
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The problem is not a difficult one - certainly accessible to keen and talented 16yr olds.
CheskiChips said:
Maybe the issue is everyone current solution contains a Taylor series?
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What?
 
Guest254 said:
From the (short) article:

The problem is not a difficult one - certainly accessible to keen and talented 16yr olds.

What?
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I don't care about the damn math problem, I don't care about the story. I saw someone ask a question and numerous people mock him because they didn't understand the question, I provided a link with very light speculation on a topic I don't know much about and haven't looked into - you can take your disgruntled responses somewhere else.
 
CheskiChips said:
I don't care about the damn math problem, I don't care about the story. I saw someone ask a question and numerous people mock him because they didn't understand the question, I provided a link with very light speculation on a topic I don't know much about and haven't looked into - you can take your disgruntled responses somewhere else.
Click to expand...
Now, now. If corrections bother you this much, perhaps it's an idea to read articles you cite.
 
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