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Chaitin's Constant

81 pointsby mgreenleafover 5 years ago

10 comments

fxjover 5 years ago
He even did more:<p>Mathematician GregoryChaitin defines elegance in computer programming in this way: A computer program written in a given language is elegant if no smaller program written in the same language has the same output. He goes on to prove that it is impossible to prove that a given program above a certain very low level of complexity is elegant.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.c2.com&#x2F;?ChaitinElegance" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.c2.com&#x2F;?ChaitinElegance</a><p>And he gave some examples in his book.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;jillian.rootaction.net&#x2F;~jillian&#x2F;science&#x2F;chaitin&#x2F;www.cs.umaine.edu&#x2F;chaitin&#x2F;unknowable&#x2F;index.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;jillian.rootaction.net&#x2F;~jillian&#x2F;science&#x2F;chaitin&#x2F;www.c...</a><p>See the example code in LISP here:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;darobin&#x2F;chaitin-lisp" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;darobin&#x2F;chaitin-lisp</a>
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jaymzcampbellover 5 years ago
If you want to read a bit more from the mathematician himself on this very topic he wrote an accessible &quot;pop-math&quot; book about it, &quot;Meta Math!: The Quest for Omega&quot; though you&#x27;ll need to look beyond the author&#x27;s rather strange choices of metaphor (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodreads.com&#x2F;book&#x2F;show&#x2F;249849.Meta_Math_" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodreads.com&#x2F;book&#x2F;show&#x2F;249849.Meta_Math_</a>).
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opengraveover 5 years ago
I just want to drop this playlist here <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=HLPO-RTFU2o&amp;list=PL86ECDEDE3FA8D8D1" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=HLPO-RTFU2o&amp;list=PL86ECDEDE3...</a> as its one of my fav lectures<p>Gregory Chaitin Lecture at Carnegie-Mellon University in 2000, he gives a bit of history of parts of math&#x2F;computing that leads up to him talking about qualities of random. He touches on Cantor, Bertrand Russell, Hilbert, Gödel and Turing.
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deepnotderpover 5 years ago
Afaict Chaitin independently came up with the concept of Kolmogorov complexity... as a teenager!
daxfohlover 5 years ago
The surprising thing to me was, following the link to &quot;normal numbers&quot;, that this is called out as one of the only proved irrational normal numbers, even though it is proven that the set of irrational numbers is normal almost everywhere.
me_me_meover 5 years ago
Can somebody explain to me how is this useful? Is it used for anything?<p>Or is it pure theoretical concept with interesting emerging properties.
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KboPAacDA3over 5 years ago
Numberphile has a video explaining the relationship between the number categories, and includes a brief discussion of where Chaitin&#x27;s Constant belongs.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=5TkIe60y2GI" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=5TkIe60y2GI</a>
Chris2048over 5 years ago
In contrast: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jamesrmeyer.com&#x2F;topics&#x2F;chaitins-omega.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jamesrmeyer.com&#x2F;topics&#x2F;chaitins-omega.html</a>
benji-yorkover 5 years ago
I&#x27;m a fan of Fulton&#x27;s constant.<p>Fulton&#x27;s constant is any number of 9s. E.g., 9, 999, or 999999.
dborehamover 5 years ago
Not to be confused with his Croissant.
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