I’m glad to be able to report that “A new proof of the density Hales-Jewett theorem” has recently appeared in Annals of Mathematics. Unfortunately it’s behind a paywall, but you can find an almost final version on the arXiv.
I might add that my enthusiasm for this way of working is undimmed. The reason there has been no Polymathematical activity on this blog for quite a while is that I’ve been busy with more conventional projects, but in the not too distant future I’d like to do some more open research. Also, Gil Kalai and I have a plan to try soon to revive the EDP project. I won’t say any more about that now, but it seems a good moment to mention it.
April 24, 2012 at 3:31 am |
Open access publishing is becoming a critical necessity. Harvard’s librarians are signalling the financial unsustainability of the current modes of scholarship:
http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k77982&tabgroupid=icb.tabgroup143448
April 24, 2012 at 9:34 am |
Works such as these, represent the dawning of a new way of doing math like the other big science branch like LHC in physic. Thanks for your efforts I will try to go throught the paper to understand this results
April 24, 2012 at 8:25 pm |
Brilliant, thank you, for saying and for doing what is necessary.
April 24, 2012 at 10:17 pm |
[...] Gowers’ post about Polymath paper published On January 27, 2009 Tim Gowers’ blog he asked “Is massively [...]
April 25, 2012 at 3:57 am |
Congratulations!
Regarding future Polymath activity — I am very interested in participating, along with my daughter who is a budding mathematician. However, because I am no longer professionally focused on mathematics as a researcher, I would need to put in a good bit of time to get prepared for a polymath burst. The same would probably be true of my daughter and, I suspect, many others.
I know that there has been some reflection on how to widen participation in massively collaborative mathematics — Do you have any advice on how to prepare-to-be-useful?
I feel it would be worth quite a bit of effort to have the experience of making a true contribution to a Polymath project and participating in a new, collective way of doing mathematics. I imagine many people would feel similarly.
Thanks for any thoughts on the subject…
April 25, 2012 at 9:58 pm
Since the EDP is a reboot of a previous Polymath, you can read quite a bit of detail on the wiki.
If you for some reason need a “popular” article to show around about the EDP project, I wrote one an ACM magazine.
April 26, 2012 at 2:05 am
Thanks – that’s very helpful, particularly if the next Polymath project is in fact reviving the EDP project.
December 26, 2012 at 2:38 am |
It feels paradoxical that people collaborated online to do it and then,,, it ends up behind a paywall.
December 26, 2012 at 5:10 pm
It’s available free on the arXiv if you’re interested in reading it.