Posted on 05/26/2012 3:07:20 PM PDT by James C. Bennett
A 16-year-old schoolboy has solved a mathematical problem which has stumped mathematicians for centuries, a newspaper report said. The boy put the historical breakthrough down to “schoolboy naivety.”
Shouryya Ray, who moved to Germany from India with his family at the age of 12, has baffled scientists and mathematicians by solving two fundamental particle dynamics problems posed by Sir Isaac Newton over 350 years ago, Die Welt newspaper reported on Monday.
Ray’s solutions make it possible to now calculate not only the flight path of a ball, but also predict how it will hit and bounce off a wall. Previously it had only been possible to estimate this using a computer, wrote the paper.
Ray first came across the old problem when his secondary school, which specializes in science, set all their year-11 pupils a research project.
On a visit to the Technical University in Dresden pupils received raw data to evaluate a direct numerical simulation – which can be used to describe the trajectory of a ball when it is thrown.
When he realised the current method could not get an exact result, Ray decided to have a go at solving it. He puts the whole thing down to “schoolboy naivety” - he just refused to accept there was no answer to the problem.
“I asked myself: why can’t it work?” he told the paper.
Ray has been fascinated by what he calls the “intrinsic beauty“ of maths since an early age, according to the report. The boy was inspired by his engineer father who began setting him arithmetic problems at the age of six.
He recently won a youth science competition at the state level in Saxony and won second place in the Maths and IT section at the national final.
Originally from Calcutta, Ray couldn’t speak a word of German when he came to Dresden four years ago – but now he is fluent. Since then, he was moved up two classes in school and is currently sitting his Abitur exams two years early.
But Ray doesn’t think he’s a genius, and told the paper he has weak points as a mathematician, as well as in sports and social sciences.
Ray, whose recent breakthrough may have earned him a paragraph in the schoolbooks of the future, is currently deciding whether to study maths or physics at university.
That’s a lot of fun, actually. Some are easier than others, but so far (without calculator) I’ve hit up to 25.
I’m gonna go ahead and call “bullshit”.
They don’t mention what the problem was. They certainly don’t mention what the solution was. The motion of a body in an elliptical orbit is pretty well understood, and calculations would either be transcendental, or not transcendental, which is what I suspect they are claiming — that he discovered that something they’ve always thought was transcendental, was not.
But they don’t tell us anything, therefore “bullshit”.
FYI, “transcendental” means that there is no simple algebraic solution, that “numerical methods” must be used to sneak up on the answer.
I dated a math professor once. He said that high schools were ruining kids by prematurely placing them in groups and using group think to solve problems. He said few of them graduated knowing basic math and he ended up having to teach them what they should already know.
Or a late bloomer like my son; sucked in school, but is flourishing in the Navy. Go figure!
BTW, I can still recite the Boy Scout oath, but your tagline helped!
Navier and Stokes created equations.
But those equations have no closed-form solution.
Other articles I’ve found while searching on this kid’s name seem to suggest he’s found a closed-form solution for some equation that previously had none.
don’t know never saw Good Will Hunting
There is a good book on Rammamujan called, “The Man Who Knew Ininity”,
What I hoped to do was find balance in the things I may have accepted without question. What I found is quite the contrary.
You mentioned Psychological Projection that is the entire basis of a show called "Ring of Fire" that plays on the weekend. This weekend they went into a fever pitch talking about how vile and racist the Tea Party demonstrations were with their pictures of Obama with a Hitler mustache and then laughed saying conservatives are all old baby boomers who will soon be dead taking the republican party with them.
During the week I've caught Randi Rhodes, Stephanie Miller, Norman Goldman and of course, Ed Schultz. All of them get very angry and hateful when they talk about how angry and hateful they think conservatives are.
I've heard Mike Malloy and a lawyer from Denver named David Sirota present some balance arguments that show a different side of issues that I have accepted as valid. They haven changed my mind completely, but they've moved the needle at times.
Most of what these people present is less than valid and they are only preaching to a very small choir, but I urge everyone I know and everyone here to try to check in to a progressive stations once in a while just to see what these people are saying. The worst that can happen is it helps prepare us for the talking points we will hear in our local conversations.
Heh. That’s we say to all the public school kids.
I guess you do not have a kid with a learning disability. Did you stay at home and teach your kids?
Left the range as is, scored a 25.
I like that site, thanks!
For others interested in such practice, try “First in Math”
Subscription required, check with your son’s school to see if they have an account you can use.
Thanks for the reference.
In college, I averaged one math course per semester.
In most of them, I sweated blood to get a “C”.
That’s the thing about math. Almost everything depends on a mastery of prerequisite material, and once you take a course and fail to absolutely master it, everything that follows and depends on it is going to be a struggle.
I guarantee that if you were to start over at ground zero, say elementary algebra, and concentrate on studying as hard as needed to get straight As in every course, you’d get them no matter how far you went in mathematics. All the way to a PhD, if you wanted.
I’m convinced that anyone without brain damage and possessing moderate intelligence and an unbreakable will, who has the work ethic and refuses to allow himself to become so discouraged that he gives up, can go all the way to a PhD in math, getting top grades all the way. There are a lot of people with 120 IQs walking around with their doctorates in math.
OOPS, I mean, 'even mores'.
He works it out with a pencil.
LOL!
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Outside the US, ‘mathematics’ is shortened to ‘maths’ and not ‘math’... Just saying!
(erupted into giggling...) :)
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