Result promotion

Stream: Equational

[Douglas McNeil]

I've been wondering for a while about ways to share the project's results which could reach a wider audience.

I'm under no illusion that even an extended audience will be that big, but I think the set of people who might be interested in hearing more about the project is a lot bigger than the people who read the Annals of Formalized Mathematics. :wink: With all respect to Baez -- from whom I learned what I know about octonions back in the day! -- I think the idea of doing a survey to see what's there is a perfectly natural one. And the basic ideas are pretty accessible.

Given the reach of our fearless leader, it's likely there will be some sci-news stories from the usual suspects at the official completion of the project, as there were near the start, and he's already mentioned it in some interviews. TBH, this is one reason why it might not be the worst thing in the world if 677->255 finite remains unsolved, that's a nice story point.. and is likely to draw interest from some people with spare brain cycles or spare compute cycles, who might enjoy the challenge of dealing with the last survivor. Then we'd get both the poetry and the eventual result without having to give up too much time! :holiday_tree:

One idea would be to put together one, or maybe several short, 3B1B-style explainers of what we did and how: the SoME math videos are pretty popular, and that's the level I had in mind. Manim's also pretty straightforward to use, although it's one of those systems where doing some tricky things is easy and doing some trivial things is a pain. And we'd have the finite magma game to use too.

Other ideas?

[Terence Tao]

These are interesting ideas! Of course I will mention the project on my own blog and other social media, especially when we "declare victory", but it would be great to have further independent efforts to report about the project. Contributing more ideas to @Eric Taucher 's finite magma game would be one obvious way forward. I don't know how easy it is to make a video on the level of what Grant Sanderson (3B1B) produces though - he makes it seem effortless, but I'm sure it isn't...

[Shreyas Srinivas]

The library is not easy to use. I tried and failed two years ago. There was a STOC talk and I believe they also used it around the same time, so it can't be impossible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wY1GRTxF84

[Douglas McNeil]

I meant "level" in the sense of "degree of math prerequisites assumed to follow the discussion", not in the sense of quality. :smile:

Given the stolen minutes from other projects we're all contributing as it is, I think our goals should be a little more realistic than that.. ("and in our spare time we'll match the best in the game!")

But whether we put something together ourselves, however modest, or simply reach out to the youtube math community and offer time and consulting to anyone who might be interested, crowdsourcing the PR, I think it's an important way to share discoveries these days. I can't be the only one who learned about the resolution of the bunkbed conjecture because some videos were recommended to me and not because I read the preprint.. :bed:

[Shreyas Srinivas]

Seconded. The last month I have been contributing what little I can amidst a time crunch at work. Tbh, I wonder if Grant Sanderson would be interested in an explainer video for this project.

[Jose Brox]

Terence Tao ha dicho:

I don't know how easy it is to make a video on the level of what Grant Sanderson (3B1B) produces though - he makes it seem effortless, but I'm sure it isn't...

If you want, I can talk to Eduardo Sáenz de Cabezón and propose the idea to him: he has a Youtube channel ("Derivando") for popularizing mathematics with more than 1.5 million subscribers, and he is the host of a celebrated Spanish national TV science and humor show (Órbita Laika). He also happens to research in computational algebra, so he would be well suited for the task. He usually produces videos in Spanish, but if proposed to him I think he may be open to the idea of speaking about our project in English (or even in both languages). Let me know what you think!

[Terence Tao]

I guess it can't hurt to mention the project to him at this stage, though as we don't have completed products yet, it may be premature to propose a video. I'm fine with having videos or other material around this project in Spanish, by the way; English is the default language for scientific publication, but that doesn't mean it has to be the default language for scientific communication.