THE VALUE (AND PITFALLS) OF PROOF

Joint Colloquium with UW Statistics and the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering

The computer is taking over. AND, in many branches of applied mathematics and statistics we hear 'why bother to prove theorems? simulations and numerical approximation are easier and better for real problems'. NOT SO FAST;
I will present a collection of real world examples where the computer lies and thousands of hours of simulations give persistently wrong results. On the other hand, we theorem provers can prove useless, irrelevant things that choke off research and really do miss the interesting stuff. There is room for both of us, and there are interesting things to think about.

A live stream of the talk will be made available one hour prior to the event.