Xueba starts with change

Chapter 173 Math Games
Although Chen Zhou has decided to take up a more difficult subject, such as Goldbach's conjecture, twin prime conjecture, Riemann's conjecture, Hodge's conjecture, ABC conjecture and so on.

He didn't think it was suitable. One was a matter of time.

He might not be able to solve these problems even if the system tasks have expired for many years.

One is that these conjectures require a step-by-step process in a certain sense.

Especially conjectures about prime numbers.

With the sieve method and the circle method approaching their limits, it was difficult for Chen Zhou to break through for a while.

What this requires is accumulation.

What's more, Chen Zhou secretly felt that the resolution of these conjectures might have to wait.

Just when Chen Zhou was distressed, the small class of algebra discussion class started.

Chen Zhou thought that Professor Wu Xiping would be the first to open the small class discussion class, but he didn't expect that Zhang Zhongyuan's classroom would take the lead.

However, in the first class of the algebra discussion class, there was no discussion on a certain issue as Chen Zhou expected.

Zhang Zhongyuan just asked some math questions casually and asked the students to answer them by themselves. If they couldn't answer, he just answered them by the way.

Among them, of course, it is impossible to have the thinking collision of the students.

"Today is your first small class class since you entered the Department of Mathematics of Yanda University. I don't want to talk about something too esoteric. Let's just talk about mathematics and algebra."

Zhang Zhongyuan's opening remarks set the tone for this small class.

After finishing speaking, Zhang Zhongyuan glanced at the students under the podium. When he saw Chen Zhou, he was slightly surprised, but he roughly guessed what Chen Zhou was thinking.

Chen Zhou noticed Zhang Zhongyuan's gaze and smiled at him.

Zhang Zhongyuan was taken aback for a moment, and immediately thought, it seems that we have to do something difficult today...

Zhang Zhongyuan coughed lightly, and continued: "Algebra is actually a more advanced evolution of arithmetic. When arithmetic has accumulated a large number of solutions to their respective quantitative problems. In order to find a more systematic and universal method to solve various The problem of quantitative relationship produces elementary algebra with the principle of solving algebraic equations as the central problem."

After a pause, Zhang Zhongyuan asked: "Then do you know who is the person who really created algebra?"

Someone replied: "Diophantus, the ancient Greek mathematician."

Chen Zhou thought to himself, "That's not right."

Sure enough, Zhang Zhongyuan shook his head slightly.

At this time, Chen Zhou heard Zhao Qiqi's voice, and he said, "It's Zhang Cang and Geng Shouchang, the ancient Chinese mathematicians. They wrote "Nine Chapters of Arithmetic" with equation problems."

Chen Zhou was taken aback for a moment, he didn't expect this kid to know a lot, it's just a pity...

Zhang Zhongyuan said with a smile: "Student Zhao Qiqi's idea is good, but it's a pity that this is not about tracing the origin, but asking who founded it."

Zhao Qiqi smiled foolishly, then lost her voice.

Zhang Zhongyuan waited for a while, saw that no one answered, and was about to give the correct answer, but was preempted.

"It's Musa, the ancient Arabic mathematician."

Hearing the words, Zhang Zhongyuan looked at Chen Zhou who had said these words in surprise.

He didn't expect Chen Zhou to know such a cold history of mathematics.

In fact, Chen Zhou only saw it by accident.

In the past two days, in order to systematically establish the thinking of topic selection, he traced the roots of many branches of mathematics.

Moreover, he didn't intend to answer at first, but the students in the small class are not strong enough, and none of them said anything, so wouldn't Professor Zhang pretend to be coercive?

Chen Zhou naturally felt that something was wrong, and he still had to fight for their mathematics department.

So, he answered out loud.

Seeing Chen Zhou looking at him, Zhang Zhongyuan nodded slightly: "That's right, it was indeed the ancient Arabic mathematician Musa who created algebra."

Hearing Zhang Zhongyuan's words, these students in the mathematics department looked at Chen Zhou again with inexplicable eyes. Do you need to learn the history of mathematics well before learning mathematics?

Zhang Zhongyuan didn't care about the thoughts of these students. He coughed lightly, focused the eyes of the students on himself again, and said again: "Actually, the research object of algebra is not only numbers, but more and more difficult is the abstraction of each other. structure. We don't care what the number itself is, we only care about the various relationships and their properties."

Speaking of this, Zhang Zhongyuan changed the subject: "Well, let me leave you with a task, the next small class, what we are going to discuss. Go back and interpret the Galois theory carefully."

Fuck!Professor Zhang, what does it mean to interpret Galois theory?

You must know that this thing is not so easy to interpret, the timeline in it spans two or three centuries.

The establishment of Galois theory not only completed the research started by Lagrange, Ruffini, Abel and others, but also played a vital role in opening up the road of abstract algebra.

Thinking of this, Chen Zhou looked at Zhang Zhongyuan with a strange expression, did he think that Zhang Zhongyuan was embarrassing these people?
Zhang Zhongyuan also looked at Chen Zhou, smiled slightly, and immediately got up and wrote a line on the whiteboard.

The moment Chen Zhou saw this line of words, he was slightly taken aback.

What kind of trick is this?What does this lesson mean?
Although this problem is regarded as the category of abstract algebra, but what do you want to do?
Just when Chen Zhou was puzzled, Zhang Zhongyuan turned around, pointed to the content on the whiteboard, and said slowly: "Next, let's play a math game. You can bring any number you like , through the calculation rules I wrote, perform calculations, and see the final results."

Before Zhang Zhongyuan finished speaking, he heard someone ask, "Professor, is this a Hail conjecture?"

Zhang Zhongyuan raised his eyebrows, and then replied: "That's right, this is indeed Hail's conjecture. But we don't talk about conjecture today, we just play games."

The man stopped talking, lowered his head silently, and took a pen to randomly substitute in numbers and calculate.

Chen Zhou glanced at the whiteboard.

If this thing is pushed back a week, he is still not very familiar with it.

But now, he is too familiar with it.

Life cannot be separated from conjecture.

Solving math problems requires guesswork.

Scientific research is based on conjecture.

Guess, can't get around the bend.

A good conjecture is like a guiding stone, guiding the development of science.

From conjecture to discovery, there will be treasures in the process.

One day in 1976, the "Washington Post" reported a piece of mathematics news on the front page.

The article tells a mathematical story.

In the mid-70s, on the campuses of famous universities in the United States, people wanted to go crazy, playing a digital game day and night, forgetting to eat and sleep.

The game itself is very simple.

Write out a positive integer N arbitrarily, and transform it according to certain rules.

The law is that if N is odd, the next step becomes 3N+1.

If N is even, the next step becomes N/2.

Not only students, but even lecturers, researchers, professors and some old scholars who usually don't show their faces have joined in.

They never tire of playing this numbers game.

Why is this game so attractive?
Because, after countless trials, they found.

No matter what kind of number N is, it will eventually be unable to escape back to the bottom and become the number 1.

Rather, there is no escape from the magic of the number itself, which ends up in a 4-2-1 loop at the bottom.

always.

This is the famous "hail conjecture".

Chen Zhou withdrew his thoughts and substituted a special value "27".

Although 27 is an extremely common natural number, it is a number with special significance in the history of the "Hail Conjecture".

(End of this chapter)