Talk:Erdős–Moser equation

Is this solution to the Erdos-Moser equation true? http://vixra.org/pdf/1805.0230v1.pdf 3p8 (talk) 21:11, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

On circumstantial grounds alone (techniques employed, venue of publication), the answer is "of course not". Concretely, it's easy to identify the error: in the final paragraph on page 2, the author proposes to substitute x + 1 for x in equation (3.4), but equation (3.4) is valid only for those values of x that actually are solutions, not in general. --207.232.84.226 (talk) 01:25, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Did you know nomination

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• ... that all solutions of the Erdős–Moser equation correspond to convergents of ln(2), yielding "one of very few instances where a large scale computation of a numerical constant has an application"?

• Source: [1]

The support for the hook is in the article's abstract.

• • Reviewed:

5x expanded by LucasBrown (talk). Number of QPQs required: 0. Nominator has less than 5 past nominations.

LucasBrown 11:35, 30 May 2024 (UTC).

• Pinging David Eppstein if he could contribute to the nomination (either as a reviewer or to suggest hooks) as the current hook seems very specialist or complex and thus may not be easily understood by general readership. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 00:54, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

I'll also note that the article would be better with a bit more prose to contextualize what is going on here. Currently the article itself is very inaccessible to the average reader, it would be nice to have a background of why this equation is important (I see the term "Diophantine equation" being used, maybe you could include a few sentences on how this relates to the article) and some prose (as opposed to proofs) to convey the methods being used to solve it. Sohom (talk) 01:10, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

According to our DYK rules, "Hooks should be likely to be perceived as unusual or intriguing by readers with no special knowledge or interest". I don't think that is the case for the proposed hook. Also, I think the hook is misleading: as far as we know, it could be the case that all solutions of the equation are the single solution 1+2=3, unrelated to the log(2) calculation. And calling this an "application" is dubious when it is just a mathematical calculation used to support another mathematical calculation. I have generally interpreted this rule as requiring that the hook connect the subject to some real-world topic beyond mathematics (just as we require that hooks about fiction connect the subject to some real-world topic beyond the plot). Unfortunately I see no non-mathematics at all in the article, on which to build a hook. It's kind of interesting to me that the known lower bound on a second solution is such a huge number, but I don't think I represent a general reader for this purpose. I do also agree that the walls of equations make the article hard to read (not just to the average reader), but that is not really a DYK criterion. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:22, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

To be honest, as a non-math guy, this hook is remarkably uninteresting. Though that is obviously my opinion, it shows that it is likely not a suitable one, or the article as a whole as a matter of a fact. TheBritinator (talk) 01:43, 5 June 2024 (UTC)