The Shortest Ever Papers - Numberphile

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  • Опубликовано: 6 дек 2016
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    Tony Padilla discusses some of the shortest math papers to be published. From Conway to Nash.
    More links & stuff in full description below ↓↓↓
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Комментарии • 1,3 тыс.

  • @RexGalilae
    @RexGalilae 7 лет назад +7439

    the first one is purely savage. one simply doesn't get to fire shots at the king of mathematics like this guy did

    • @robiniekiller45
      @robiniekiller45 7 лет назад +30

      Rex Galilae yeah

    • @MsKritiChauhan
      @MsKritiChauhan 7 лет назад +353

      look up leonard euler. euler = king of maths. the first short paper disproved "euler's conjecture" by stating a counterexample, thus firing a shot at the "king of maths" (awesome comment, as evidenced by 180 likes in around 2 hrs :))

    • @TomParis51
      @TomParis51 7 лет назад +133

      I think I can explain the metaphors he used:
      king of mathermatics: Euler
      to fire shots at: disproving him (or at least one of his conjectures)
      OP is certainly correct in saying that there arent many people who have achieved this in their life

    • @MasterJack2
      @MasterJack2 7 лет назад +72

      I do not mean to offend you and if I am doing it anyway I am sorry, but you asked *what?* implying you didnt get it, he just wanted to make it clear for you since every evidence up there seemed to mean you didnt get it.

    • @uuu12343
      @uuu12343 7 лет назад +17

      A. L.
      You should have used "Wut" LOL

  • @MrCheeze
    @MrCheeze 7 лет назад +5646

    Not a fan of the second paper, they were clearly going out of their way to snipe the record for least words, even going so far as to sacrifice clarity and sensible formatting for that goal. The first paper you showed is far more elegant: it provides all the information anyone could reasonably ask for, and still only takes two sentences to do it.

    • @completeandunabridged.4606
      @completeandunabridged.4606 7 лет назад +134

      MrCheeze At least it was a trickshot.

    • @5JSX5
      @5JSX5 7 лет назад +446

      maybe they just did it for the hidden toucan pun (n+2 can)

    • @brian554xx
      @brian554xx 7 лет назад +23

      5JSX5 I believe that would be ntoucan.

    • @theparkourhobo
      @theparkourhobo 7 лет назад +257

      +Sen Zen Actually, Conway strikes me as a pretty playful guy. Trying to break the record for shortest paper just for fun seems like something he would do.

    • @alarageref2481
      @alarageref2481 7 лет назад +90

      Also seems up his alley to publish a paper that doesn't achieve its main goal yet also be insightful

  • @adityakhanna113
    @adityakhanna113 7 лет назад +3536

    It's like mathematicians spitting one liners and then dropping the mic.

    • @ravengaming4604
      @ravengaming4604 7 лет назад +39

      this is one beautiful comment

    • @MrHSX
      @MrHSX 7 лет назад +3

      +

    • @isabellabornberg2153
      @isabellabornberg2153 7 лет назад +2

      Aditya Khanna +

    • @floridmonkey2723
      @floridmonkey2723 7 лет назад +2

      +

    • @englishmuon1931
      @englishmuon1931 7 лет назад +16

      Reminds me of Dr Caulfield lecturing DEs at cambs. He'd often finish the lecture by hitting his pen on the lectern, saying "drops the mic" and then walks out lol

  • @WakenerOne
    @WakenerOne 7 лет назад +2756

    Not mathematical, but when it comes to brevity in communication, the prize goes to Victor Hugo. Hugo went on vacation as Les Miserables was being published. Wanting to know how sales of the book were going, he wrote a letter to his publisher which read simply, "?"
    The publisher sent a response to the author which read "!"

    • @kevinwells9751
      @kevinwells9751 6 лет назад +826

      Which was the one and only time Victor Hugo achieved brevity

    • @greenjelly01
      @greenjelly01 6 лет назад +161

      Pity they didn't have emoticons back then.

    • @hoyohoyo922
      @hoyohoyo922 5 лет назад +156

      He was just tired of writing at that point

    • @Hjtrne
      @Hjtrne 5 лет назад +33

      That's not really brevity. It's just the only question he would ever have asked in that circumstance. Imagine sending a '?' to a random person, and getting a reply of 'what book, I'm not even a publisher'. That what would make sense, if the '?' was actually conveying information succinctly.

    • @jetison333
      @jetison333 5 лет назад +146

      @@Hjtrne a large part of conveying information succinctly is know the context, and thus what you could leave out. This just happnes to be a case that you can leave out the whole question and still communicate successfully.

  • @miriamrosemary9110
    @miriamrosemary9110 7 лет назад +2058

    (5:11) "The unsuccessful self-treatment of a case of writer's block" - I laughed so hard. Just brilliant.

    • @antoniolewis1016
      @antoniolewis1016 7 лет назад +11

      +

    • @AxtheDragon
      @AxtheDragon 7 лет назад +199

      Someone showed me that paper while I was writing my masters thesis... I was very tempted to squeeze it in as a citation somewhere :-)

    • @aykut04
      @aykut04 7 лет назад +50

      I thought the same thing lol. I have a paper i'm working on right now, i think i could squeeze it in somewhere.
      Challenge Accepted!

    • @Halogrunt1234
      @Halogrunt1234 7 лет назад +40

      if you look at the article on pubmed, there are tons of medical articles that do!

    • @starcubey
      @starcubey 6 лет назад +7

      It is nice to know that you laughed and that you can quote a video with a time stamp, but why does this comment have 464 likes?

  • @PetraKann
    @PetraKann 7 лет назад +1193

    TIL
    that "The Effects of Peanut Butter on the Rotation of the Earth", a
    study co-authored by hundreds of physicists, is only one sentence long:
    "So far as we can determine, peanut butter has no effect on the rotation
    of the earth."

    • @adamspaans8787
      @adamspaans8787 7 лет назад +244

      Even better; does a decreasing number or pirates cause global warming?
      Abstract: The evidence says yes
      But this is a classic example or causation and correlation

    • @starcubey
      @starcubey 6 лет назад +76

      Dang, and here I was thinking that the added mass would change the effect of gravity on the earth or something and that the conclusion was that if we gathered all of the peanut butter in the world in one spot, we could prolong the inevitable heat death of the earth by a few seconds somehow.

    • @gregthestoner6401
      @gregthestoner6401 6 лет назад

      Wtf lol

    • @gkky-xx4mc
      @gkky-xx4mc 5 лет назад +29

      @@adamspaans8787 Ah, I see you are an enlightened subject of His Holy Noodliness, too. R'amen

    • @EebstertheGreat
      @EebstertheGreat 5 лет назад +17

      That's not a real paper, it's an article in the magazine "Annals of Improbable Research."

  • @PhilBagels
    @PhilBagels 7 лет назад +1527

    Someone should publish
    one of these shortest papers
    in haiku format.

    • @JohnnyDoeDoeDoe
      @JohnnyDoeDoeDoe 7 лет назад +156

      PhilBagels
      Your comment is not
      appreciated nearly
      enough my dear friend

    • @otto9141
      @otto9141 7 лет назад +9

      enough my _dear_ friend*
      FTFY

    • @otto9141
      @otto9141 7 лет назад +11

      Tanmay Nandanikar You also were wrong
      in the middle line, because
      it was way too long.

    • @Summy_99
      @Summy_99 7 лет назад +12

      +otto hammar a-ppre-ci-at-ed near-ly count them. There are 7. You're correct about the last line though

    • @Summy_99
      @Summy_99 7 лет назад +1

      Ohhhh I feel like an idiot now. For some reason only your reply and the first one were showing up in the youtube app so I thought you were responding to the first one

  • @pitthepig
    @pitthepig 7 лет назад +965

    I liked the blank "comprehensive overview of chemical-free consumer products". Some people should have to "read" it XD

    • @amperzand9162
      @amperzand9162 7 лет назад +38

      I mean, if you count software it arguably shouldn't be blank. :V

    • @MagicGonads
      @MagicGonads 6 лет назад +41

      Software uses ionic compounds and metallically bonded (soldered) materials which are chemicals.

    • @starcubey
      @starcubey 6 лет назад +42

      But I thought organic foods don't have chemicals! ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

    • @MagicGonads
      @MagicGonads 6 лет назад +14

      Also the silica and plastics used in the supportive structures are chemicals.
      And if you're talking about pure software, not even as stored data, then it will still have a chemical effect on your brain.

    • @qwerty687687
      @qwerty687687 6 лет назад +10

      Software isn't a consumer product, though. When you use software, you don't consume it.

  • @DodderingOldMan
    @DodderingOldMan 7 лет назад +2322

    I read a bit of John Nash's thesis. I didn't understand a word of it, but I did find a typo. I felt smart. No, wait, I mean... pathetic.

  • @spiffo5349
    @spiffo5349 7 лет назад +214

    well the "The unsuccessful self-treatment of a case of 'writers block'" one has infinite impact per word, or perhaps an undefined impact

    • @midas8877
      @midas8877 5 лет назад +1

      Infinity isn't defined

    • @thomas.thomas
      @thomas.thomas 3 года назад +2

      or zero impact

    • @spiffo5349
      @spiffo5349 3 года назад +5

      @@midas8877 correction: it is not well-defined

    • @xenotronia6681
      @xenotronia6681 2 года назад

      @@midas8877 it is but okay

  • @imeredithc
    @imeredithc 7 лет назад +1011

    Another very short paper with a lot of impact per word is the paper that Watson and Crick wrote describing the structure of DNA--only 2 pages!

    • @VeteranVandal
      @VeteranVandal 7 лет назад +90

      Yep. And it is kinda interesting (and easy) to read. Recommend to anyone checking it.

    • @prolleytroblems
      @prolleytroblems 7 лет назад +6

      This was the first one that came to mind!

    • @VeteranVandal
      @VeteranVandal 7 лет назад +54

      Aditya Khanna
      If by "stealing" you mean "acknowledging their sources in the second paragraph and by concluding it is a helix based on the Bessel function pattern that the diffraction pattern suggests, and by drawing the physical consideration that the bases are inside instead of outside", then sure they "stole".

    • @acockbur
      @acockbur 7 лет назад +161

      Their last sentence probably has had the greatest impact of any in science: "It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material."

    • @denisdaly1708
      @denisdaly1708 7 лет назад +9

      Meredith Lee You know. It probably has greater impact. Well done.

  • @onlyjohnrulz
    @onlyjohnrulz 7 лет назад +135

    I think Riemann's paper "On the Number of Primes Less Than a Given Magnitude" deserves a mention. At 9 or 10 pages, it essentially founded analytic number theory, and states a hypothesis that remains one of the greatest unsolved problem in mathematics

  • @mrmimeisfunny
    @mrmimeisfunny 7 лет назад +333

    1:28 that is the mathematician equivalent of clickbait

    • @matthewstuckenbruck5834
      @matthewstuckenbruck5834 5 лет назад +15

      I actually heard Alexander Soifer speak and it definitely makes sense that he would write a clickbait paper

  • @seanflood7151
    @seanflood7151 7 лет назад +212

    The urban myth is probably referring to George Dantzig, a statitician who solved previously unanswered problems that he had mistaken for homework.

    • @antanis
      @antanis 4 года назад +13

      Isn't this the basis for goodwill hunting? And related to graph theory?

    • @beeble2003
      @beeble2003 3 года назад +23

      But that's not an urban myth: it actually happened.

    • @georgelionon9050
      @georgelionon9050 3 года назад +30

      @@beeble2003 Yes and no. The story is true, but the PhD thesis was 57 pages long. So it's a 1 pager is the myth part.

    • @bimbogiallo
      @bimbogiallo Год назад +6

      @@georgelionon9050 The story is also true in the sense that Danzig's supervisor told him not to worry about his PhD thesis as he could have just put the two papers in a binder and he'd have accepted it

    • @NoriMori1992
      @NoriMori1992 2 месяца назад

      @@bimbogiallo "A year later, when I began to worry about a thesis topic, Neyman just shrugged and told me to wrap the two problems in a binder and he would accept them as my thesis."

  • @colinmcgrail7109
    @colinmcgrail7109 7 лет назад +455

    >Poissonian
    Something seems fishy about that

    • @cptn_n3m012
      @cptn_n3m012 5 лет назад +16

      In french poisson means fish

    • @matty7834
      @matty7834 5 лет назад +55

      @@cptn_n3m012 (that's the joke)

    • @jakimoretti7771
      @jakimoretti7771 5 лет назад +45

      @@cptn_n3m012 he should've made a joke about it, right?

    • @hfyaer
      @hfyaer 4 года назад +16

      I'm french so I got it but I don't understand why the french word for fish seems to be common knowledge here...

    • @nablahnjr.6728
      @nablahnjr.6728 4 года назад

      alright Colin

  • @xenialafleur
    @xenialafleur 7 лет назад +374

    There is a short story by Edward Wellen titled If Eve had failed to conceive. It's zero words long.

    • @14112ido
      @14112ido 7 лет назад +27

      Xenia Lafleur damn... it's pure genius.

    • @amisfitpuivk
      @amisfitpuivk 7 лет назад +92

      There's another one called If Eve Really Did Conceive:
      Endless incest.

    • @jensen333
      @jensen333 7 лет назад +5

      +Hi genius!

    • @ronfish8375
      @ronfish8375 5 лет назад +16

      I should compile a condensed version of Christian scripture including only parts that were true.
      It also, would be zero words.

    • @avelkm
      @avelkm 4 года назад

      @@amisfitpuivk given 5-10% of Neanderthal DNA, not always an incest.

  • @pluvius9265
    @pluvius9265 7 лет назад +32

    While it's great to see my fellow West Virginian get recognized for having great short papers, as someone with a biology degree I have to give the impact-to-words-ratio award to Watson's and Crick's "A structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid," arguably the most important paper in the history of the life sciences. It fits on a single double-column page, and toward the end it contains this cute quote written as if the researchers had no idea of the enormity of what they'd discovered:
    "It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material."

  • @LARAUJO_0
    @LARAUJO_0 4 года назад +22

    Having tons of information just to meet certain writing criteria is a hugely annoying problem I have with modern sciences, so seeing these was a breath of fresh air.

  • @mah38900
    @mah38900 4 года назад +14

    I had a professor who's Ph.D thesis was far shorter than normal. Only 19 or 20 pages. He was worried that his committee wouldn't let him pass his defense because of the unusual length. But they did. Paul Erdos was actually one of the people on the committee, too.

  • @Spiderlanky
    @Spiderlanky 7 лет назад +92

    The writers block one got me so deep in the feels that was amazing

  • @Soliloquy084
    @Soliloquy084 7 лет назад +1044

    I'll just say that a picture is worth a thousand words.

    • @TheEvilVargon
      @TheEvilVargon 7 лет назад +46

      Does that then make it a long paper?

    • @Soliloquy084
      @Soliloquy084 7 лет назад +45

      Based on the papers I've read, and with two figures giving it 2000 words, it's still on the short side, just maybe not as impressively short.

    • @featheredice
      @featheredice 7 лет назад +30

      If £1 is worth a loaf of bread then does that mean I can make toast out of a £1 coin?

    • @TheEvilVargon
      @TheEvilVargon 7 лет назад +20

      featheredice Now we are asking the real questions

    • @victorotene
      @victorotene 7 лет назад +23

      Probably not.

  • @memertarian2434
    @memertarian2434 3 года назад +20

    "Alright class, so for this essay there's no word requirement, just give a complete answer"

  • @SuperPeacebreaker
    @SuperPeacebreaker 7 лет назад +353

    get rekt Euler lol xD

    • @Ostebrix
      @Ostebrix 7 лет назад +46

      too bad Euler wasnt alive anymore in 1966 xD he woulda been like "dang it I'm not perfect"

    • @oz_jones
      @oz_jones 6 лет назад +70

      "Dang, u got me there bro" - Euler, probably.

    • @martinshoosterman
      @martinshoosterman 4 года назад +13

      @@Ostebrix realistically, if euler had still been alive im 1966 (assuming his mental faculties never deteriorated)
      First of all, hed have disproven himself a long time ago, second of all, hed probably have proven everything else.

    • @Ostebrix
      @Ostebrix 4 года назад +12

      you see... when you respond to someone 2 years late you will very likely get this response:
      lol I don't remember watching this video or commenting that soooo whatever man

  • @magnusdagbro8226
    @magnusdagbro8226 7 лет назад +74

    In control theory, there's a paper titled "Guaranteed Margins for LQG Regulators" by John C. Doyle.
    Abstract "-There are none."

  • @matthewmcclure8799
    @matthewmcclure8799 5 лет назад +22

    two short important papers:
    E. W. Dijkstra, 'A note on two problems in connexion with graphs', Num. Math. (computer science: canonical shortest path algorithm)
    E. Gettier, 'Is true justified belief knowledge?', Analysis (philosophy: refutation of the classical model of knowledge since Plato)
    both are about two-and-a-half pages

  • @paulpeters5546
    @paulpeters5546 7 лет назад +219

    Another short paper is the Abridged Table of Even Primes

    • @bi1iruben
      @bi1iruben 7 лет назад +70

      Forget about the "Abridged" version, the full paper "Table of Even Primes" is shorter.

    • @ModKijko
      @ModKijko 7 лет назад +54

      The abridged version doesn't include '2' but the the full table obviously does.

    • @msolec2000
      @msolec2000 7 лет назад +52

      But the 2 is still shorter than the word "abridged".

    • @michaelbauers8800
      @michaelbauers8800 7 лет назад +3

      I still feel uncomfortable that 2 is not a prime. But there's reasons... :)

    • @ianwalker6546
      @ianwalker6546 7 лет назад +41

      Since when is 2 not a prime? Pretty certain it is! You might be thinking of 1, which is nowadays excluded from the primes by virtue of the fact that many, many theorems would have to be re-stated with 1 as a special case, including the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic.
      2 isn't a Gaussian prime though, but neither are 5, 13, 17... etc.

  • @power-max
    @power-max 7 лет назад +172

    Thanks, this inspired me to put this much effort into a PhD!!! :D

  • @jacoblastname5966
    @jacoblastname5966 7 лет назад +48

    12 seconds after being posted and it's in my recommended

  • @ITR
    @ITR 7 лет назад +47

    "Is it possible to get a one-page paper written in Liberation Serif with font size 65 published in a peer reviewed scientific journal?"
    That would fill up a 8.50'' x 11.00'' page with 1.00'' margins.

    • @mmmmmmmmmmmmm
      @mmmmmmmmmmmmm 5 лет назад +2

      But the margins will be too small to fit it

    • @sipos0
      @sipos0 3 года назад +2

      Whether it is possible or not would probably depend on your definition of scientific. I don't think it is possible unless there is a disappointingly bad peer reviewed scientific journal, or you have a very broad definition of scientific.

  • @slingshotninja6970
    @slingshotninja6970 7 лет назад +715

    when you want your P.Hd but you lazy AF

    • @rkan2
      @rkan2 7 лет назад +35

      But to be honest. You only need to be more intelligent than the on who could explain your findings.. You just do it and avoid the unnecessary bits.. :D

    • @Roflwes
      @Roflwes 7 лет назад

      rkan2 p

    • @ConManAU
      @ConManAU 7 лет назад +75

      As Blaise Pascal probably said (but has since been attributed to all the people these quotes are usually attributed to), "I apologise for writing such a long letter. I would have written a shorter one, but I didn't have the time."

    • @JivanPal
      @JivanPal 5 лет назад +5

      *Ph.D.

    • @loveforsberg530
      @loveforsberg530 4 года назад +5

      Arguably the whole point of mathematics is condensation of information, in an accessible way.

  • @knuthalvorsen1196
    @knuthalvorsen1196 7 лет назад +29

    Task: Write about laziness.
    Answer: This is laziness.
    He got an A. This is lore from my country.

    • @marmelade5118
      @marmelade5118 3 года назад +4

      Here we tell it with "What is risk?" "This is risk."

    • @Unelith
      @Unelith 3 года назад +2

      Task: Name 5 of your biggest flaws
      Answer:
      1. Laziness

  • @androidkenobi
    @androidkenobi 7 лет назад +30

    1974 seems to have been a hilarious year for papers

  • @williamnathanael412
    @williamnathanael412 3 года назад +12

    I kinda hoped Gettier's paper "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?" made the cut.

  • @NothingMaster
    @NothingMaster 4 года назад +9

    Tony Padilla is incredibly interesting to listen to; it’s his enthusiasm about math that’s captivating and inspiring.

    • @DrKaii
      @DrKaii Год назад

      I saw this exact comment on another one of his vids. Was that u?

  • @KC-dw6yz
    @KC-dw6yz 6 лет назад +4

    In terms of impact factor per word, I'd like to also suggest Leo Esaki's original paper announcing the creation of the tunnel diode: it is titled 'New Phenomenon in Narrow Germanium p-n Junctions'. It's one page long, has hand drawn bandgap diagrams, and won the Nobel Prize in Physics for it's author!

  • @polymarc2171
    @polymarc2171 7 лет назад +3

    One of the shortest thesis was the thesis by C.N. Yang. His thesis was published as "On the Angular Distribution in Nuclear Reactions and Coincidence Measurements" and was about 30 pages, but apparently, it took his advisor Teller had quite a bit of trouble getting Yang to make his thesis longer. Teller kept asking him to extend his results, although even the original 4 or 5 pages would have been sufficient for a Ph.D. I heard this while doing my Ph.D. at Stony Brook, but I can't confirm it personally.

  • @daiduongdaviddinh140
    @daiduongdaviddinh140 4 года назад +122

    Is 1+1=2?
    Abstract.
    Sometimes.
    References
    E. Galois, A. Grohendieck, S. Ramanujan

    • @MikeRosoftJH
      @MikeRosoftJH 4 года назад +22

      The two expressions are equal, but you have messed up the reference. The correct reference is: Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, Principia Mathematica, volume 2, page 86. ("The above proposition is occasionally useful.")

    • @duncanw9901
      @duncanw9901 4 года назад +6

      @@MikeRosoftJH 1+1=0 in Z/2Z

    • @escapeadil
      @escapeadil 4 года назад +6

      @@MikeRosoftJH I found Principia Mathematica vol. 2 but couldn't see 1+1=2. What might I be doing wrong?! Is it definitely on page 86? EDIT - never mind, I see it now. Just looks confusing!

    • @jakobunfried2669
      @jakobunfried2669 4 года назад +1

      @@duncanw9901 so the correct answer is "depends on the 1 and 2" =)

    • @AviMehra
      @AviMehra 3 года назад +1

      @@duncanw9901 but then 0=2. The reason it is always true is that 2 is defined as 1+1

  • @johannesderspinner
    @johannesderspinner 5 лет назад +25

    In philosophy there is a three page paper ("Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?" by Edmond Gettier), which had a huuuge impact on the subject.

    • @mateusgabriel3013
      @mateusgabriel3013 5 лет назад +1

      Came here to comment this.

    • @KucheKlizma
      @KucheKlizma 4 года назад +2

      What's the total KDA? How does it compare to The Communist Manifesto by K.M.?

  • @johndoeing
    @johndoeing 7 лет назад +147

    But what were the LONGEST papers/thesis?

    • @100najaja
      @100najaja 5 лет назад +37

      Classification of finite simple groups

    • @FM-kl7oc
      @FM-kl7oc 5 лет назад +143

      "The complete list of all integers" by Chuck Norris (2005)

    • @dog_owner
      @dog_owner 5 лет назад +10

      A proof that TREE(3) is finite (which has yet to exist).

    • @someperson5137
      @someperson5137 5 лет назад +1

      dog Then you get to TREE(4) lol

    • @dog_owner
      @dog_owner 5 лет назад +1

      No TREE(4) doesn't need a proof

  • @Dan1elAndrade
    @Dan1elAndrade 7 лет назад +29

    Proof that 1+1=2
    First: Sum is defined as moving on the number line b units from a when a+b.
    Second: Define the first integers (0, 1, 2, 3, 4... )
    By this definition to add a 1 means to move on the number line from a to the next number. By the second definition 2 is the next number after 1.
    1+1=2 true
    QED

    • @Dan1elAndrade
      @Dan1elAndrade 7 лет назад +3

      It kinda is, but is true.
      Other way of saying it is:
      1+1 is defined as being equal to 2
      And from then on we can create maths.
      And it is actually true, because that's the reason we know 1+1=2 because it's defined as such.

    • @ganjanaut6038
      @ganjanaut6038 7 лет назад +1

      What's the point of mentioning QED when we know 1 is less already (true)

    • @Dan1elAndrade
      @Dan1elAndrade 7 лет назад

      Because I wanted to give it a shoot at my short proof :D

    • @ganjanaut6038
      @ganjanaut6038 7 лет назад

      +Ganjanaut that might come off as an anti particle

    • @ganjanaut6038
      @ganjanaut6038 7 лет назад

      Grounds control for direction of the pilot

  • @haleffect9011
    @haleffect9011 7 лет назад +12

    That one on writer's block is brilliant

  • @General12th
    @General12th 7 лет назад +31

    Now I want to write a paper with the title, "How many theses that end with a question answer that question in the abstract?", and then cite that very paper in the abstract.

    • @beeble2003
      @beeble2003 3 года назад

      Better to go for the paradox with "How many papers whose title is a question _do not_ answer that question in the abstract?"

  • @allyourcode
    @allyourcode 7 лет назад +12

    Oh man, I love the chemistry one. Classic XD

  • @goshisanniichi
    @goshisanniichi 7 лет назад +3

    I was always under the impression that it was Gauss's proof of the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra that was the super short one. I looked for but could not find any scan of it or anything to substantiate that.

  • @astropgn
    @astropgn 7 лет назад +6

    The article that revealed to the world the helicoidal structure of our DNA is also very short and concise. I think it has the same impact that Nash paper had, but for the sciences of life

  • @repmel
    @repmel 6 лет назад +16

    Okay, here's my shot:
    Is the Riemann Hypothesis true?
    Probably.

    • @gbx5180
      @gbx5180 4 года назад +1

      Prove it!

  • @buzzy33
    @buzzy33 4 года назад +6

    I love how the first paper just burned Euler with only one page. 👏

  • @jonproxy2758
    @jonproxy2758 7 лет назад +3

    one of the only trending videos that isn't an ad

  • @JackLe1127
    @JackLe1127 7 лет назад +35

    1:25 wait John Conway the game of life guy?

    • @capitalist88
      @capitalist88 7 лет назад +8

      Yes! :) He's been in some of Brady's videos.

    • @JackLe1127
      @JackLe1127 7 лет назад

      ooooooh

    • @ZardoDhieldor
      @ZardoDhieldor 7 лет назад +18

      Don't let Mr. Conway hear that! He hates when people only take about his game.

    • @alexanderstiefelmann5982
      @alexanderstiefelmann5982 7 лет назад +2

      My first associations with the name Conway are even more obscure. Chained arrow notation and surreal numbers.

    • @u.v.s.5583
      @u.v.s.5583 7 лет назад +1

      You mean one of the fathers of the ATLAS of finite groups? The discoverer of the Conway group? The man who made a digital computer out of urinal parts?

  • @rickrijpers4730
    @rickrijpers4730 7 лет назад +4

    Just needed this after a boring day of school

  • @NoActuallyGo-KCUF-Yourself
    @NoActuallyGo-KCUF-Yourself 7 лет назад +3

    "Unsuccessful Self-treatment of Writer's Block" - LOL!

  • @singerofsongs468
    @singerofsongs468 7 лет назад +40

    The Chemical-Free paper is hilarious.

  • @MartinMenky
    @MartinMenky 7 лет назад +136

    wait till you see my first paper haha

    • @froidesprit
      @froidesprit 7 лет назад +37

      Martin Menkyna was that it?

    • @MartinMenky
      @MartinMenky 7 лет назад +13

      MichaelKingsfordGray it's not gonna be THAT bad .. hopefully :D

    • @davecrupel2817
      @davecrupel2817 7 лет назад

      MichaelKingsfordGray 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

  • @greenhorntenderfoot9261
    @greenhorntenderfoot9261 7 лет назад +4

    Very cool stuff! It would be interesting to try measure the complexity of letters sent out by an organization using a computer program that measures the complexity of words as well as the length of sentences and look to see if there is a connection between the complexity of the letters and the number of people that contact the organization seeking clarification. Essentially is there an optimum length and complexity of a letter?

  • @BrunoTaglietti
    @BrunoTaglietti 5 лет назад

    This is my favorite video of the channel. And it is a tough competition.

  • @starrychloe
    @starrychloe 7 лет назад +21

    I think Satoshi Nakamoto's bitcoin whitepaper had the most impact per word.

    • @covalencedust2603
      @covalencedust2603 7 лет назад +11

      That's a different kind of impact though. You can't compare a mathematical discovery with an invention. And still, inventing game theory is a way bigger deal than inventing the bitcoin.

    • @jogiff
      @jogiff 7 лет назад +11

      Sebi20070 but did any of Nash' papers get libertarian retards to cream themselves over a pyramid scheme?

  • @pablogriswold421
    @pablogriswold421 7 лет назад +31

    I think the legendary thesis about which you were taking was George Danzig's.

    • @kolumdium
      @kolumdium 7 лет назад +5

      I think you are missing a t in George Dantzig. Do you know which paper exactly?

    • @pablogriswold421
      @pablogriswold421 7 лет назад +7

      karatekid You're sure right! My phone autocorrected to Danzig, bit his name was indeed Dantzig. I think the paper was On the Fundamental Lemma of Neyman and Pearson.

    • @michaelbauers8800
      @michaelbauers8800 7 лет назад +3

      Hold me closer George Danzig. Now that I read that attempt at humor, it wasn't as funny as thought it might be

    • @u.v.s.5583
      @u.v.s.5583 7 лет назад +2

      That paper is a mammoth, it is almost full 7 pages long!

    • @pablogriswold421
      @pablogriswold421 7 лет назад +1

      U.V. S. Hope that's sarcasm... Poe's Law?

  • @Callerooo
    @Callerooo 7 лет назад +28

    There was a Numberphile video with James Grim where he talked about a student who was late to a class and misunderstood an assignment. He thought your were suppose to solve the assignment but it was, up until then, not solved. However, he solved it and James said that when he wanted to do a PHD his professor said that he only needed turn in the proof he made. Could that be the short PHD thesis they talk about? Can't remember the video though

    • @azlan194
      @azlan194 7 лет назад +1

      Are you talking about A Beautiful Mind movie reference?

    • @JannikPitt
      @JannikPitt 7 лет назад +4

      Georg Dantzig was the name of the matematician +NaCl on my food

    • @spyone4828
      @spyone4828 7 лет назад +30

      I remember this, but not from a Numberphile video. I found it on TV tropes, in a list of people who did something thought to be impossible because they didn't know it was supposed to be impossible.
      Here is the entry from their page "Achievements In Ignorance":
      (Quote)In 1939, George Dantzig, a mathematics graduate student, arrived late in class and copied what he thought was homework written on the blackboard. After taking longer than usual to solve the problems, he apologized to his professor for his lateness and turned them in. What he didn't know was that what he copied wasn't homework but two unsolved statistics theorems, the proofs of which he published. To this day, colleges and professors will sometimes place previously unsolved problems like these in with other more mundane problems on "entrance exams" or other evaluative tests, just to see if some brilliant young student who hasn't heard about the problem not being solved yet can find a solution nobody else thought to try.
      Dantzig's story eventually morphed into the Urban Legend of the student that was late for an exam and barely completed all the problems on the board only for him to be told that the final problem(s) were "unsolvable" problems and that he made history. The legend can be traced to Reverend Robert Schuller, whom Dantzig once met and told him about the blackboard incident only for Schuller to add the embellishments found in the legend.(End Quote)

    • @generic_programmer
      @generic_programmer 6 лет назад +2

      It's from the numberphile video about the problem in Will Hunting

    • @beeble2003
      @beeble2003 3 года назад

      @@JannikPitt George, not Georg. He was born in the USA and named after George Bernard Shaw.

  • @jamesdecross1035
    @jamesdecross1035 4 года назад +1

    I do like this guy and his enthusiasm for his subject.

  • @rosiefay7283
    @rosiefay7283 7 лет назад +1

    Another short paper with great impact is: Marcel Golay. Notes on Digital Coding. Proc. IRE. 37 (1949): 657. It described the error-correcting codes now known as Golay codes, which have proved useful in digital transmission over noisy channels.

  • @musictest9999
    @musictest9999 7 лет назад +136

    Does P=NP?
    No.
    -Nataly RAW, 2016

    • @nathan791
      @nathan791 7 лет назад +27

      If N=1 or P=0

    • @Max-eo7lz
      @Max-eo7lz 7 лет назад +25

      It's a joke, because the question whether P = NP (which are Complexity Classes, not variables) is still an unsolved problem in Information Technology.

    • @Croix1
      @Croix1 7 лет назад +4

      does p=np?
      yes.
      me, 2016

    • @wulf2121
      @wulf2121 7 лет назад +2

      if that were true, we could instantly forget any algorithm-based encryption.
      (Quantum encryption and truly randomized one-time-codes would still work though)

    • @cecasiahaan6801
      @cecasiahaan6801 7 лет назад +3

      Nataly RAW What is the symbol of the 53rd element of the periodic table?
      I.
      -ceca siahaan 2016

  • @Pouk3D
    @Pouk3D 7 лет назад +27

    The writer's block one is genius.

  • @pinkdispatcher
    @pinkdispatcher 7 лет назад +2

    I also heard that myth about the famous 1-page thesis in school, but didn't think much of it except as a motivation for making your point as concise as possible.

  • @Locut0s
    @Locut0s 7 лет назад +1

    What I like about the first example is that it shows a very early example of the use of computing power to produce proofs or disproofs. The CDC 6600 mentioned is an early mainframe. I know many have a natural distaste for any kind of mathematical proof or disproof that heavily involves brute force computing. Well it seems to have a long history dating back to the early computers.

  • @geraldmerkowitz4360
    @geraldmerkowitz4360 7 лет назад +6

    The actual shortest story I was told about is this one :
    "The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door..."
    -*Knock*, Fredric Brown, 1948

    • @ModKijko
      @ModKijko 7 лет назад +9

      For sale: baby shoes, never worn

    • @geraldmerkowitz4360
      @geraldmerkowitz4360 7 лет назад

      mod prime
      I had to think about it twice before understanding it

    • @RobinDSaunders
      @RobinDSaunders 7 лет назад +1

      KNOCK KNOCK.
      "Who's there?"
      DEATH.
      "Death wh-"

    • @leungchoihung2465
      @leungchoihung2465 7 лет назад

      sarcastic bowl of cornflakes
      "Me
      We"

    • @cecasiahaan6801
      @cecasiahaan6801 7 лет назад

      Aniyoyo 良采康 LIGHGHT

  • @Hecatonicosachoron
    @Hecatonicosachoron 7 лет назад +7

    Did Wittgenstein not submit theTractatus as his PhD thesis? Probably in terms of effortless theses this must be one of the best historical exaples of the 20th c.

  • @trueverdicts685
    @trueverdicts685 5 лет назад +1

    The second paper was so well phrased. So short yet so clear..

  • @Mrwiseguy101690
    @Mrwiseguy101690 6 лет назад +1

    Disproving Euler with a counterexample = Legend mathematician status

  • @oldcowbb
    @oldcowbb 7 лет назад +14

    but the margin still don't have enough space to contain it

  • @CaptainCalculus
    @CaptainCalculus 7 лет назад +7

    Isn't Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity only 13 pages long? Surely that would be up there in the #words vs impact section

  • @CaryInVictoria
    @CaryInVictoria 4 года назад +1

    Very interesting and entertaining! I had a friend whose Ph.D. thesis (UC Berkeley) was 15 pages long. It dealt with a problem in queueing theory. I think that for most of us holding that degree it didn't take long to come to the realization that our thesis was really quite bad.

  • @BenScooter1
    @BenScooter1 7 лет назад

    Haven't watched any Numberphile videos in a while, but chanced upon this one and enjoyed it :P

  • @Sladepheonix
    @Sladepheonix 7 лет назад +74

    My grandfather once got assigned a paper in philosophy class with the prompt: "Why?"
    He replied simply, "Why not?"
    I think he aced it.

  • @PaulBennett
    @PaulBennett 7 лет назад +29

    Huffman's thesis was 12 pages.

    • @MrSzybciutki
      @MrSzybciutki 7 лет назад +93

      after, or before compression?

    • @PaulBennett
      @PaulBennett 7 лет назад +27

      klingt net you're not wrong. His famous paper on entropy coding was not his thesis. My mistake.

    • @fabiangiesen306
      @fabiangiesen306 7 лет назад +7

      Yeah, "A Method for the Construction of Minimum-Redundancy Codes" was not his thesis, it was a term paper. :) He was supposed to show optimality of Shannon-Fano codes, which are broadly similar but use a top-down subdivision construction (recursively split the set of symbols trying to keep the weights of both subsets as close as possible). Turns out that's not optimal, but Huffman's bottom-up procedure (repeatedly merge the two lowest-weight subsets) is.

    • @grlt23
      @grlt23 7 лет назад +1

      You Sir, has won few internets by this comment :)

  • @tomelifeisjustonebig
    @tomelifeisjustonebig 4 года назад +1

    Tony and Holly are the best subjects / presenters because they’re the sort you’d love to sit down and have a beer with.

  • @kamirimourad
    @kamirimourad 7 лет назад

    very nice episode!

  • @CliveWolfe
    @CliveWolfe 7 лет назад +26

    Einsteins' paper on Mass-energy equivalence i.e. E = mc2 is only 2.5 pages. That's got to be up there?

    • @edminchau811
      @edminchau811 5 лет назад +6

      That paper had one of the shortest abstracts ever. The whole abstract was:
      E=mc^2

  • @robotguy
    @robotguy 7 лет назад +27

    The shortest abstract ever was in Physics, and contained no words at all.
    E=mc². The paper itself is only four pages long, and although it didn't win Einstein a Nobel (he got two others for Brownian motion and the photoelectric effect), it is the most famous equation in the world.

    • @talltroll7092
      @talltroll7092 6 лет назад +16

      Which is impressive, considering that, strictly speaking, it is not the correct equation

    • @NXTangl
      @NXTangl 5 лет назад +1

      Tall Troll Unless you understand m as relative mass, as modern physicists take it, and not rest mass.

    • @JohnDoe-ti2np
      @JohnDoe-ti2np Год назад +1

      "Ist die Trägheit eines Körpers von seinem Energieinhalt abhängig?" is actually three pages long, but it had no abstract. Also, Einstein won only one Nobel Prize, for the photoelectric effect.

  • @Szederp
    @Szederp 7 лет назад +1

    I can usually follow things for about 3 minutes. This time I lost it after 10 seconds. Numberphile is getting better by the day.

  • @bananabenana
    @bananabenana 6 лет назад +1

    I love these videos

  • @asdasdasdasd714
    @asdasdasdasd714 7 лет назад +7

    That first one deserves a "Thug Life"

  • @MitchBurns
    @MitchBurns 7 лет назад +3

    I actually didn't know that triangle thing before. Also, the triangle you started with, the one with length 2 with 4 inside of it, that looked suspiciously like the Triforce from Zelda.

    • @KuraIthys
      @KuraIthys 7 лет назад +7

      Yes. The triforce has always been very similar in nature to several things. Notably the fractal pattern referred to as 'the Sierpinski triangle'
      You do sometimes wonder what influences game designers sometimes...

    • @MitchBurns
      @MitchBurns 7 лет назад +3

      KuraIthys I have a feeling the triforce was just 3 triangles put together to form a bigger triangle with and upside down triangle between them.

  • @albertocattaneo4627
    @albertocattaneo4627 7 лет назад

    Another nice one, in algebraic geometry, is Beauville-Donagi paper about the Fano variety of lines on a cubic fourfold: 3 pages long and it is one of the most cited papers in the field...

  • @rafaelgpontes
    @rafaelgpontes 6 лет назад

    I'm happy I came across this video. :)

  • @dalitas
    @dalitas 7 лет назад +9

    is there a Nobel price in economics?
    abstract:
    no, kinda.
    it's not a true Nobel price in economics; it's the riksbank's price in memory of Nobel

  • @charilaosmylonas5046
    @charilaosmylonas5046 7 лет назад +5

    Not a "very" short paper, but Fourier's idea to use... well... Fourier series for solving the heat equation was in a 6 page paper. Here's your winner for influence/content per "words".

    • @zokalyx
      @zokalyx 5 лет назад

      Indeed. This drastically changed many fields of physics, as well as mathematics. I mean, who would have thought quantum mechanics would use it?

  • @ShaneTilton
    @ShaneTilton 3 года назад

    In 5:47, the law comes from journalism and it’s Betteridge's Law of Headlines ("Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no").

  • @peterells1720
    @peterells1720 6 лет назад +1

    "Unknotting spheres in five dimensions" by EC Zeeman, 1960, is great. It is ~200 words long, including generalising the proof to unknotting n-spheres. It is available as a pdf online.

  • @phampton6781
    @phampton6781 7 лет назад +27

    Consider a thesis comprising all theses...

    • @amisfitpuivk
      @amisfitpuivk 7 лет назад +7

      Thesis of all Theses
      Change.
      -By Hi

    • @qikink1
      @qikink1 7 лет назад +4

      NO NO NO this always gets us into trouble.

    • @roccotena4058
      @roccotena4058 7 лет назад

      The power set of theses?

    • @RCassinello
      @RCassinello 6 лет назад +2

      "Yes but probably not."

    • @adamweishaupt3733
      @adamweishaupt3733 6 лет назад

      Does a thesis comprising all theses comprise itself?

  • @ashoka9306
    @ashoka9306 7 лет назад +5

    watson and crick establishing the shape of dna with 800 words.

  • @WillKrause21
    @WillKrause21 5 лет назад

    This showed up on my page on April 1. Feels appropriate.

  • @ru40342
    @ru40342 8 месяцев назад +1

    Every economics PhD student hopes to achieve what Nash did. Short but genius idea using relatively simple maths but achieve greatness (and of course, a nobel prize)
    Game theory is still one of the main concepts of Microeconomics, more than 70 years after that famous paper was published. What a beautiful mind.

  • @kennstedas
    @kennstedas 7 лет назад +4

    Check out Edmund Gettier, he crushed contemporary Epistemology based on Plato in like 3 pages

    • @neiloppa2620
      @neiloppa2620 7 лет назад +1

      kennstedas what's that?

    • @BulentBasaran
      @BulentBasaran 7 лет назад

      Sorry, meant to reply to your question, but, mis-placed it above..

  • @rocknexus55
    @rocknexus55 6 лет назад +3

    I heard Conway discovered a bird recently.
    Called the n squared plus toucan

  • @korujaa
    @korujaa 6 лет назад

    Great video, tks.

  • @cveo1971
    @cveo1971 6 лет назад +1

    5:15 I applaud Dennis Upper for his effort to overcome a writer's block.

  • @thomassynths
    @thomassynths 7 лет назад +101

    Conway's paper doesn't specify constraints on epsilon, so the whole paper is incorrect in the case epsilon > 1.

    • @DarkMaple68
      @DarkMaple68 7 лет назад +79

      epsilon ist generally assumed to be

    • @ZipplyZane
      @ZipplyZane 7 лет назад +2

      Wouldn't it be >n?

    • @DarkMaple68
      @DarkMaple68 7 лет назад +12

      no, for epsilon>1 you would need 2n+1 more. therefore, the statement is false for n>1.

    • @ZipplyZane
      @ZipplyZane 7 лет назад +3

      DarkMaple68 I think I'm getting the terminology messed up. I was thinking n was the size of the small triangle, when n is the size of the big triangle.

    • @covalencedust2603
      @covalencedust2603 7 лет назад +4

      Ye, the paper was obviously a joke or so. Maybe they made it that short on purpose as a bet or something.

  • @richardfarrer5616
    @richardfarrer5616 4 года назад +27

    I want to write a paper "Is the proof cited in this paper self-referential?" with a proof, "Yes - see ".

    • @georgelionon9050
      @georgelionon9050 3 года назад

      It's a more complicated way of the infamous logic simpleton. "This statement is true."

  • @IamGrimalkin
    @IamGrimalkin 7 лет назад +1

    Einstein's PhD theses (A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions) is the same length as Nash's in pages but quite a bit less in wordcount, and it had rather a large impact.

  • @samhit3431
    @samhit3431 7 лет назад

    WOW!!!
    The video intrigues me to pursue !