Volume 1: Student Life Chapter 173 Mathematical Games

Although Chen Zhou has decided to work on a more difficult topic, such as the Goldbach conjecture, the twin prime conjecture, the Riemann conjecture, the Hodge conjecture, the ABC conjecture, etc.

He felt that it was not appropriate, firstly because of the time issue.

I'm afraid that even if the system task has expired for many years, he may not be able to solve these problems.

First, these conjectures require a certain degree of gradual progress.

Especially conjectures about prime numbers.

As both the sieve method and the circle method have reached their limits, it is difficult for Chen Zhou to make a breakthrough for a while.

This requires accumulation.

In addition, Chen Zhou felt that the solutions to these conjectures might have to wait for a while.

Just when Chen Zhou was worried, the small class of algebra discussion class began.

Chen Zhou originally thought that Professor Wu Xiping would be the first to start a small group discussion class, but he did not expect that Zhang Zhongyuan's classroom would take the lead.

However, the first class of the algebra discussion class did not start with a discussion on a certain issue as Chen Zhou had expected.

Zhang Zhongyuan just asked some math questions casually and let the students answer them themselves. If they couldn't answer them, he would answer them casually.

Of course, there can be no collision of ideas among the students.

"Today is your first small class since you entered the Department of Mathematics at Yanda University. I don't want to talk about anything too profound. 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 below the podium. When he saw Chen Zhou, he was a little surprised, but he also roughly guessed what Chen Zhou was thinking.

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

Zhang Zhongyuan was stunned, and then he thought, it seems that he needs 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 various quantitative problems, in order to seek a more systematic and universal method to solve various quantitative relationship problems, elementary algebra was created with the principle of solving algebraic equations as the central problem."

After a pause, Zhang Zhongyuan asked, "Do you know who actually founded algebra?"

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

Chen Zhou thought to himself: "Not right."

Sure enough, Zhang Zhongyuan shook his head slightly.

At this time, Chen Zhou heard Zhao Qiqi's voice and said, "It was Zhang Cang and Geng Shouchang, two ancient Chinese mathematicians. The "Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art" they wrote contains equation problems."

Chen Zhou was slightly stunned. He didn't expect that this kid knew so much. It was a pity...

Zhang Zhongyuan smiled and said: "Student Zhao Qiqi's idea is good, but it is a pity that this is not to trace the origin, but to ask who founded it."

Zhao Qiqi smiled innocently, and then fell silent.

Zhang Zhongyuan waited for a while and saw that no one answered. Just as he was about to say the correct answer, someone beat him to it.

"It's the ancient Arabic mathematician Moussa."

Upon hearing this, Zhang Zhongyuan looked at Chen Zhou with some surprise.

He didn't expect that Chen Zhou also knew such a obscure history of mathematics.

In fact, Chen Zhou just saw it by chance.

In the past two days, in order to systematically build up ideas for topic selection, he traced the origins of many branches .

Moreover, he had not intended to answer it originally, but these students in the small class were not helpful and no one could answer it. Wouldn't that give Professor Zhang the chance to show off?

Chen Zhou naturally felt that it was inappropriate, but he still had to fight for their mathematics department.

That's why he answered out loud.

Seeing Chen Zhou looking at him, Zhang Zhongyuan nodded slightly: "Yes, it was indeed the ancient Arab mathematician Moussa who founded algebra."

After hearing what Zhang Zhongyuan said, the students in the Department of Mathematics looked at Chen Zhou with puzzled eyes again. Does it mean that to study mathematics, one must first learn the history of mathematics?

Zhang Zhongyuan ignored his classmates' thoughts. He coughed lightly, drew their attention back to himself, and said again, "In fact, the research object of algebra is not only numbers, but also their abstract structures. We don't care what numbers are, we only care about various relationships and their properties."

At this point, Zhang Zhongyuan changed the subject: "Well, I'll leave you a task. In the next small class, we're going to discuss the content. Go back and carefully interpret the Galois theory."

What the hell! Professor Zhang, what does it mean to interpret Galois theory?

You know, this thing is not so easy to interpret, the timeline here 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 crucial role in opening up the path of abstract algebra.

Thinking of this, Chen Zhou looked at Zhang Zhongyuan with a strange expression. He wondered if Zhang Zhongyuan was making things difficult for these people.

Zhang Zhongyuan also looked at Chen Zhou, smiled slightly, then stood up and wrote a line of words on the whiteboard.

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

What is this routine? What is the meaning of this lesson?

Although this problem falls into the category of abstract algebra, what do you want to do?

Just when Chen Zhou was puzzled, Zhang Zhongyuan turned around, pointed at the content on the whiteboard, and slowly said: "Next, let's play a math game. You can bring a number you like, calculate it according to the calculation rules I wrote, and see the final result."

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

Zhang Zhongyuan raised his eyebrows and replied, "Yes, this is indeed a hail conjecture. But we are not talking about conjectures today, we are just playing games."

The man stopped talking, lowered his head silently, and randomly plugged in numbers with a pen to perform calculations.

Chen Zhou glanced at the whiteboard.

A week ago, he was not very familiar with this thing.

But now, he was all too familiar with it.

Life is full of speculation.

Solving mathematical problems requires conjectures.

Scientific research is based on conjecture.

Guess, a turn that cannot be avoided.

Good conjectures are like guiding stones, directing the development of science.

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

One day in 1976, The Washington Post reported a mathematical news on its front page.

The article tells a mathematical story.

In the mid-1970s, on the campuses of prestigious universities in the United States, people were playing a numbers game like crazy, day and night, forgetting to eat and sleep.

The game itself is simple.

Write down any positive integer N and transform it according to a certain rule.

The rule is that if N is an odd number, 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 up have joined in.

They never get tired of playing this numbers game.

Why is this game so attractive?

Because, after countless experiments, they found out.

No matter what number N is, it will eventually not be able to escape back to the bottom and become the number 1.

To be precise, there is no way to escape the magic of the number itself, and this number will eventually fall into the 4-2-1 cycle at the bottom.

Always .

This is the famous "hail conjecture".