Comments on: DARPA Challenge Problems

By: Jacob Freeze

Jacob Freeze — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 01:28:16 +0000

“Humble Ben” is visible at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mKyy8y26F8

This board would be a lot more lively if it allowed embedded videos!

By: Jacob Freeze

Jacob Freeze — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 01:26:03 +0000

Are the giant letters and vellum background of the DARPA questions really as pompous and pretentiousas they appear to be? What do those words mean, anyway?

Let’s ask “Humble Ben” Kingsley!

By: John Baez

John Baez — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 17:59:21 +0000

For more discussion of these problem choices, try the n-Category Cafe.

You can apply for a grant to solve one of these problems.

By: John Armstrong

John Armstrong — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 05:49:54 +0000

Or it could be for printing out as a booklet.

By: Walt

Walt — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 05:21:10 +0000

The only explanation I can think of for the weird format was that it was a Powerpoint presentation converted to PDF.

By: Jacob Freeze

Jacob Freeze — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 05:12:34 +0000

Since the Goldbach Conjecture is prominently left out of the DARPA list, this is an excellent time to ask a simple question about it and restore a little honor to that grand old problem:

Are all the primes necessary to satisfy the conjecture? More concretely, is there some proper subset of the primes such that every even number so far tested is the sum of two of them?

By: John Armstrong

John Armstrong — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 01:05:56 +0000

My favorite is the motivation for number 14:

AN INFORMATION THEORY FOR VIRUS EVOLUTION

Why not?

By: Isabel

Isabel — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 22:48:23 +0000

Do they have to distribute it as a PDF file with one sentence on each page?

It’s an interesting list, though.