Genius of the Rules-Style System

Chapter 146: Chapter 137: Proof of the Collatz Conjecture in the Magazine

During the presentation of ’Zhao’s Filter’ at Yanhua University, Zhao Yi mentioned that he had solved the Collatz Conjecture. With a better-safe-than-sorry mindset, Li Yilai returned home determined to study the topic further and beat Zhao Yi to publishing a paper.

This was quite shameless.

But Li Yilai couldn’t care less about whether he was being shameless or not.

Zhao Yi’s ’Filter’ had let Li’s years of hard work gushing away and resulted in him harboring no good feelings towards Zhao Yi. Moreover, the temptation to solve a mathematical conjecture was irresistible.

Once the Collatz Conjecture becomes ’Li’s Theorem’, every mention of it would be associated with his name. He might even use it as a springboard to compete for the highest honor in the mathematical world, the Fields Medal. Being universally recognized as a top mathematician and retiring with this achievement would be a fulfilled life.

Would anyone else even care then?

That’s the reality of society.

Winners take all, while losers, no matter how many struggles they go through, would eventually be forgotten. Perhaps disputes and controversies would arise for a while, but no one would discuss them as time passes.

Li Yilai dived into his research with great expectations, thinking that Zhao Yi wasn’t lying and indeed had proved the Collatz Conjecture. He speculated that the line of proof would rely on binary representation, and the other processes must be hidden within ’Zhao’s Filter.’

Forgetting sleep and food!

He would hang by his thumbs and stab himself in the thigh to stay awake and focused...

Li Yilai’s dedication to his research was, indeed, commendable. However, hard work doesn’t always yield success. Thoroughly going through ’Zhao’s Filter’ proof process several times, he couldn’t find a specific way to prove it.

"This isn’t right!"

"There’s no progress!"

"Was the kid lying?"

Li Yilai became more and more suspicious. World-class mathematical problems couldn’t be solved that easily, could they?

Although Zhao Yi had discovered an interesting ’Filter’, most of its success was attributed to an unconventional approach. The difficulty of mathematical conjectures was on a whole other level, and countless top mathematicians had studied the Collatz Conjecture for decades without success.

So...had he been played?

After realizing this, Li Yilai angrily tore all his draft papers, once again wasting days of effort and feeling like a monkey being toyed with without even knowing it.

At the same time,

Others with similar thoughts as Li Yilai also believed they had been fooled by Zhao Yi. After examining the case closely, they found no difference between binary and decimal representations.

It was just a different way of expressing the same thing.

For instance, if a function was f(x) = a+b, changing x to y and a, b to c, d would result in f(y) = c+d, which had no difference from the original function.

Thoughts and ideas were still lacking.

Those who couldn’t take it had no way to seek revenge. Their academic connections were rendered useless because Zhao Yi was just a high school student who could be considered ’desireless and unambitious.’ Even if they had powerful connections, could they prevent him from going to university?

Not to mention whether it was possible or impossible, if Zhao Yi didn’t enroll in a domestic university, there would be plenty of international universities that would welcome him with open arms!

All they could do was badmouth him on the internet.

A few people badmouthing him had no effect, so Li Yilai even hired an online ’water army’ (troll brigade) to specifically slander Zhao Yi by saying things like ’Zhao Yi doesn’t understand mathematics’ and ’Zhao Yi’s speech was disrespectful to academics.’

This was somewhat useful.

Li Lin, a guest on the show "Brain Power Burst," felt that he had found a point to criticize Zhao Yi.

When Zhao Yi explained the steps of solving the Rubik’s Cube in a previous episode, Li Lin had doubted it from a professional perspective, stating that the scrambled Rubik’s Cube couldn’t be completely fair. Then, Zhao Yi’s Rubik’s Cube computer had proven Li Lin wrong.

That became a stain on his reputation.

Even now, many netizens referred to Li Lin as ’Dr. Unfair Li.’

If Li Lin had a better attitude, he would have probably just laughed it off since ’Dr. Unfair Li’ wasn’t a bad nickname. Netizens mostly gave him the name jokingly, and the appearance of the Rubik’s Cube computer had shocked many people, with Li Lin just being an incidental casualty.

However, Li Lin couldn’t let go of the matter.

Whenever he saw the nickname ’Dr. Unfair Li’, he felt angry and held a grudge.

During one episode of "Brain Power Burst," there was a genius in mathematical calculation who could mentally solve large square roots and even recite decimal places. In the post-analysis, the genius mentioned computer whiz Zhao Yi while discussing the numerous talented professionals in the country.

Li Lin seized the opportunity to assert that ’Zhao Yi might be a computer genius, but not necessarily a mathematical genius.’

He said it with conviction.

The show "Brain Power Burst" had consistently good ratings, and these comments immediately led to a flurry of discussion on the internet.

These public opinions had little impact on Zhao Yi.

Numerous netizens naturally took Zhao Yi’s side since he was just a high school student, and joking about mathematical conjectures in his speeches wasn’t a big deal.

Many people felt that saying ’Zhao Yi disrespects mathematical conjectures’ was nothing more than making a mountain out of a molehill, nitpicking, and undeservedly putting a tall hat on someone. As for whether Zhao Yi ’understands mathematics’ or ’whether he’s a mathematical genius’...

Was there any point in debating that?

At this moment, a post on the internet exposed that Zhao Yi had scored full marks in the Mathematical Olympiad, making him the champion of the Nanjiang Province and earning the only perfect score in the entire country’s provincial Olympiad exam.

Some netizens jokingly said, "Zhao Yi might not understand mathematics now, but he certainly will in the future!"

"Even those who understand mathematics can’t necessarily score full marks!"

"Zhao Yi is still just a high school student..."

This wave of online opinions was entirely artificially crafted. Since Zhao Yi wasn’t a true public figure or a celebrity, most netizens would lose interest after glancing at the discussions and making a comment or two.

Within a few days, the conversations died down.

The online opinions had no impact on Zhao Yi. With nothing urgent to do and simply waiting for his paper to be published, he was wholeheartedly enjoying his high school life. fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com

Studying is the main theme. ƒreewebɳovel.com

Zhao Yi persisted in reciting ancient poems every day and constantly doing reading comprehension exercises. By practicing more, he could find methods. Meanwhile, he followed teacher’s lectures and reviewed biology and chemistry content. He had to thoroughly understand and familiarize himself with every experiment so as to grasp all the knowledge points.

He aimed to be among the top ten in the province during the final exam.

This was not difficult.

Now, Zhao Yi had some confidence in his grades. As long as he could improve his Chinese a bit more and review chemistry and biology better, his grades could definitely be improved. Just a steady increase of ten points would be enough to compete for a provincial ranking.

During his study life, Zhao Yi also put time into his own hobbies, with a keen interest in experimental robots.

He began designing the program code for the robot.

In fact, the limitations of a robot’s intelligence were not only in the internal code and algorithms, but also in the hardware facilities. For example, image resolution, sensor efficacy, sound processors, etc. The effectiveness of each component directly determined the intelligence limit of the robot.

Of course.

There was nothing he could do about the hardware.

Zhao Yi could only modify it through software. He incorporated all the program function codes copied from the Universe Interactive and Intelligent Automation Laboratory, allowing the program’s effects to be reflected on the robot.

The robot now had simple features.

The current robot could recognize very simple speech and could convert special speech into command effects.

For example, raise the left hand, right hand.

Move forward, stop, move backward, turn around.

Play music, search on the main device, read.

And so on.

While these simple voice command executions might not be a big deal a decade later, they were already quite advanced for the present time.

Zhao Yi was designing program codes to give robots more autonomy.

First of all, walking.

Automatic pathfinding and obstacle avoidance may not sound challenging, but for a half-humanoid robot with hardware deviations, implementing automated obstacle avoidance and reaching the designated location was a complex task.

At first, Zhao Yi used sensor touch, which meant that the robot would move laterally to avoid obstacles after bumping into them. He soon found this impractical because sensors were not sensitive and robots were afraid of collisions. Therefore, he had no choice but to seek more complicated methods—

Image analysis!

This method involved complex computer graphics. Zhao Yi was not familiar with graphical algorithms, so he consulted Xu Chao from the Intelligent Automation Laboratory.

Xu Chao just smiled bitterly, "Our research can only enable intelligence to distinguish colors. To use camera footage to determine obstacle avoidance... I can only give you some relevant reference books."

"You should study it slowly by yourself..."

Then Zhao Yi received a large stack of reference books, including some research materials.

Although the research materials were public, they were not available for sale in the market. Some content was hard to find, and he was still grateful to Xu Chao. Next, his hobby became studying computer graphics.

The ultimate goal was to truly allow the robot to discern obstacles and passable paths accurately, just like a human eye would.

...

Time passed quickly.

January arrived.

Princeton, New Jersey.

Uruz, a Hungarian professor at Princeton University, was giving a popular math lecture to students. He was talking about unproven mathematical conjectures in number theory.

Uruz’s lecture had a unique personal style, as he listed ’Fermat’s Last Theorem’ as one of the conjectures since he disdained Andrew Wiles’ proof.

He told the students, "If I were to pick the biggest fraud in the past 20 years, I would definitely vote for Andrew Wiles. He won the Fields Medal through cheating!"

The students in the audience laughed.

Many mathematicians have objections to Andrew Wiles’ proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem. A clear point is that his proof process involved the Galois Theory, which is a self-contradictory pseudo-theory.

Uruz shared the same view. He talked about Wiles’ proof process and finally concluded, "Therefore, regardless of what people outside say, I believe Fermat’s Last Theorem is still just a conjecture, even if he took the Fields Medal and a million dollars based on it!"

Next, Uruz explained other mathematical conjectures, including the Hail Conjecture.

"This conjecture is quite interesting."

Uruz laughed, "What’s interesting about it is not the problem and the difficulty, but the fact that every year, someone claims to have proven the Hail Conjecture. Even some graduate students dare to submit papers on proving the Hail Conjecture. But so far, there has not been a universally recognized rigorous proof."

When Uruz finished saying this, he noticed that a student in the audience suddenly raised his hand high.

He called out the student’s name, "Jody?"

Jody Williamson held a thick magazine and stood up saying, "Professor Uruz, have you not seen the latest issue of the ’Mathematics Society Magazine’?"

"What is it?" Uruz frowned.

Williamson explained, "This is the latest issue, and pages after the 17th are all about the proof of the Hail Conjecture."

He even joked, "The articles in the ’Mathematics Society Magazine’ definitely won’t have an unrigorous proof process, right?"

Uruz was stunned.

He quickly walked to Williamson’s desk, picked up the latest magazine, and immediately turned to page 17 to begin reading carefully.