Is it me ore did she seem dead inside?

Math has never been my strong point, and the fact that this is high level theoretical math didn't help me grasp it either. Judging by the fact that she won a $50,000 scholarship and decided to go to Harvard, she must be absolutely brilliant. However, and please, someone smarter than me correct me if I'm wrong here, did she use math to prove that certain knots are identical? I tried to understand her bio chemical application speech, but if all the formula does is prove that you can claim certain knots are identical, isn't that sort of a waste? I mean, people with minds like hers have to be pretty rare. Shouldn't they be working on something more useful like cold fusion or some other crazy theory that will change the world in amazing and wonderful ways?

I'm probably just too dumb to grasp the wide spread applications of knot identification.

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*beg

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She did explain why this is important after some technical babble:

a fundamental law of biology is that there is an intimate connection between the structure and function of organic molecules

Proving something, without a shadow of a doubt, changes a theory or assumption into fact. Fact eliminates the posibility that a varience can be introduced during future experiments. Her process is somewhat compelling.
Sometimes the answers right in front of our noses are the least likely found truths! It takes a fresh mind to see the obvious.

hot

Very Nice. I hope she manages something as impressive for her masters thesis.

When she says she "proved it" does that mean she got it published? A non peer review proof is not yet properly a proof. I hope she's right, it would be a very nice tool for bio-chem computer modeling.

When she says she "proved it" does that mean she got it published? A non peer review proof is not yet properly a proof.

No, it's still a proof. It just hasn't been verified as a proof until it's been peer reviewed.

>> ^HadouKen24:It just hasn't been verified as a proof until it's been peer reviewed.


Okay so it's in superposition. If it's verified to be a valid proof then it's been a proof the whole time, and if it found to be flawed it was never a proof.

People ,other than the author, are not applying scientific rigor if they call it a proof without peer review.

@dgandhi

The word proof is probably applied differently in mathematics than whatever scientific field you're more familiar with. Writing "a proof" of a mathematical statement is pretty much the core of every advanced mathematical exercise. If I told my colleagues that "I have written a proof that Theorem XYZ is true" no one would accuse me of a lack of scientific rigor. If Theorem XYZ was a sufficiently famous conjecture, people would be buzzing around that "Mikus_Aurelius has written a proof of XYZ." If the proof was later found to be flawed, they would simply say that my proof is wrong (and perhaps that I'm a poor mathematician). A new one would have to be written (and verified) before Theorem XYZ would become accepted mathematics.

"Another cool application of knot theory is that the more knotted it is, the faster it moves during gel electrophoresis"

Really? But the bigger something is, the slower it moves... I don't get it.

Westy...

Oh it's definitely you.

Maaaan, I once did a presentation on Knot Theory for a math project in high school 11 years ago. No one understood what the hell I was talking about and my teacher told me I was just making stuff up and I got a 40%. Of course, I didn't find any proofs back then and I had a knack for royally sucking at explaining things, but I wish I could have shown my teacher this back in the day.

^ You're talking bull again.

>> ^Mikus_Aurelius: If the proof was later found to be flawed, they would simply say that my proof is wrong (and perhaps that I'm a poor mathematician).

wrong proof ≠ not proof ?

Is it therefor correct for you to claim that I have a proof that N² has a 1:1 with R ?

>> ^doogle:
"Another cool application of knot theory is that the more knotted it is, the faster it moves during gel electrophoresis"
Really? But the bigger something is, the slower it moves... I don't get it.


Maybe it has to do with the reduced surface area that comes from knotting despite the extra width.

^ good point.

Knotted vs. un-knotted (spread out)
not knotted vs. smaller (which would go faster).

Good stuff.

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The duration of this video has been updated from unknown to 2:53 - length declared by GDGD.