In mathematics, a conjecture is a conclusion or a proposition that is proffered on a tentative basis without proof. Some conjectures, such as the Riemann hypothesis (still a conjecture) or Fermat's Last Theorem (a conjecture until proven in 1995 by Andrew Wiles), have shaped much of mathematical history as new areas of mathematics are developed in order to prove them.
Formal mathematics is based on provable truth. In mathematics, any number of cases supporting a universally quantified conjecture, no matter how large, is insufficient for establishing the conjecture's veracity, since a single counterexample could immediately bring down the conjecture. Mathematical journals sometimes publish the minor results of research teams having extended the search for a counterexample farther than previously done. For instance, the Collatz conjecture, which concerns whether or not certain sequences of integers terminate, has been tested for all integers up to 1.2 × 1012 (over a trillion). However, the failure to find a counterexample after extensive search does not constitute a proof that the conjecture is true—because the conjecture might be false but with a very large minimal counterexample.
Nevertheless, mathematicians often regard a conjecture as strongly supported by evidence even though not yet proved. That evidence may be of various kinds, such as verification of consequences of it or strong interconnections with known results.
A conjecture is considered proven only when it has been shown that it is logically impossible for it to be false. There are various methods of doing so; see methods of mathematical proof for more details.
One method of proof, applicable when there are only a finite number of cases that could lead to counterexamples, is known as "brute force": in this approach, all possible cases are considered and shown not to give counterexamples. In some occasions, the number of cases is quite large, in which case a brute-force proof may require as a practical matter the use of a computer algorithm to check all the cases.
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A prime number (or a prime) is a natural number greater than 1 that is not a product of two smaller natural numbers. A natural number greater than 1 that is not prime is called a composite number. For example, 5 is prime because the only ways of writing it as a product, 1 × 5 or 5 × 1, involve 5 itself. However, 4 is composite because it is a product (2 × 2) in which both numbers are smaller than 4.
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics with the major subdisciplines of number theory, algebra, geometry, and analysis, respectively. There is no general consensus among mathematicians about a common definition for their academic discipline. Most mathematical activity involves the discovery of properties of abstract objects and the use of pure reason to prove them.
In mathematics, the Riemann hypothesis is the conjecture that the Riemann zeta function has its zeros only at the negative even integers and complex numbers with real part 1/2. Many consider it to be the most important unsolved problem in pure mathematics. It is of great interest in number theory because it implies results about the distribution of prime numbers. It was proposed by , after whom it is named.
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We establish the Minimal Model Program for arithmetic threefolds whose residue characteristics are greater than five. In doing this, we generalize the theory of global F-regularity to mixed characteristic and identify certain stable sections of adjoint lin ...
SPRINGER HEIDELBERG2023
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Inspired by the work of Lang-Trotter on the densities of primes with fixed Frobenius traces for elliptic curves defined over Q and by the subsequent generalization of Cojocaru-Davis-Silverberg-Stange to generic abelian varieties, we study the analogous que ...
SPRINGER2022
We prove that for any triangle-free intersection graph of n axis-parallel line segments in the plane, the independence number alpha of this graph is at least alpha n/4+ohm(root n). We complement this with a construction of a graph in this class satisfying ...