The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 15.0851  Monday, 12 April 2004

From:           Steve Roth <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Wednesday, 7 Apr 2004 05:02:44 -0700
Subject: 15.0767 Stylometrics
Comment:        Re: SHK 15.0767 Stylometrics

It's not only us soft-edged humanists who struggle with these
difficulties. Vetting other people's algorithms--and their embodiment in
some given computer language--is deucedly difficult:

In Math, Computers Don't Lie. Or Do They?
NYT, April 6
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/06/science/06MATH.html

A leading mathematics journal has finally accepted that one of the
longest-standing problems in the field - the most efficient way to pack
oranges - has been conclusively solved.

  That is, if you believe a computer.

  The answer is what experts - and grocers - have long suspected:
stacked as a pyramid....

...For six years, mathematicians have pored over hundreds of pages of a
paper by Dr. Thomas C. Hales, a professor of mathematics at the
University of Pittsburgh.

But Dr. Hales's proof of the problem, known as the Kepler Conjecture,
hinges on a complex series of computer calculations, too many and too
tedious for mathematicians reviewing his paper to check by hand....

Because of the ambiguities, the journal, the prestigious Annals of
Mathematics, has decided to publish only the theoretical parts of the
proof, which have been checked in the traditional manner. A more
specialized journal, Discrete and Computational Geometry, will publish
the computer sections....

Thanks,
Steve

(My algorithms, such as they are, are available for vetting at:
<http://gabrielegan.com/shaxican/Roth's%20Refinements/index.htm>.)

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