939 research outputs found
The Strong Dodecahedral Conjecture and Fejes Toth's Conjecture on Sphere Packings with Kissing Number Twelve
This article sketches the proofs of two theorems about sphere packings in
Euclidean 3-space. The first is K. Bezdek's strong dodecahedral conjecture: the
surface area of every bounded Voronoi cell in a packing of balls of radius 1 is
at least that of a regular dodecahedron of inradius 1. The second theorem is L.
Fejes Toth's contact conjecture, which asserts that in 3-space, any packing of
congruent balls such that each ball is touched by twelve others consists of
hexagonal layers. Both proofs are computer assisted. Complete proofs of these
theorems appear in the author's book "Dense Sphere Packings" and a related
preprintComment: The citations and title have been update
Certification of inequalities involving transcendental functions: combining SDP and max-plus approximation
We consider the problem of certifying an inequality of the form ,
, where is a multivariate transcendental function, and
is a compact semialgebraic set. We introduce a certification method, combining
semialgebraic optimization and max-plus approximation. We assume that is
given by a syntaxic tree, the constituents of which involve semialgebraic
operations as well as some transcendental functions like , ,
, etc. We bound some of these constituents by suprema or infima of
quadratic forms (max-plus approximation method, initially introduced in optimal
control), leading to semialgebraic optimization problems which we solve by
semidefinite relaxations. The max-plus approximation is iteratively refined and
combined with branch and bound techniques to reduce the relaxation gap.
Illustrative examples of application of this algorithm are provided, explaining
how we solved tight inequalities issued from the Flyspeck project (one of the
main purposes of which is to certify numerical inequalities used in the proof
of the Kepler conjecture by Thomas Hales).Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, 3 tables, Appears in the Proceedings of the
European Control Conference ECC'13, July 17-19, 2013, Zurich, pp. 2244--2250,
copyright EUCA 201
A formal proof of the Kepler conjecture
This article describes a formal proof of the Kepler conjecture on dense sphere packings in a combination of the HOL Light and Isabelle proof assistants. This paper constitutes the official published account of the now completed Flyspeck project
Formal Proofs for Nonlinear Optimization
We present a formally verified global optimization framework. Given a
semialgebraic or transcendental function and a compact semialgebraic domain
, we use the nonlinear maxplus template approximation algorithm to provide a
certified lower bound of over . This method allows to bound in a modular
way some of the constituents of by suprema of quadratic forms with a well
chosen curvature. Thus, we reduce the initial goal to a hierarchy of
semialgebraic optimization problems, solved by sums of squares relaxations. Our
implementation tool interleaves semialgebraic approximations with sums of
squares witnesses to form certificates. It is interfaced with Coq and thus
benefits from the trusted arithmetic available inside the proof assistant. This
feature is used to produce, from the certificates, both valid underestimators
and lower bounds for each approximated constituent. The application range for
such a tool is widespread; for instance Hales' proof of Kepler's conjecture
yields thousands of multivariate transcendental inequalities. We illustrate the
performance of our formal framework on some of these inequalities as well as on
examples from the global optimization literature.Comment: 24 pages, 2 figures, 3 table
A formal proof of the Kepler conjecture
This article describes a formal proof of the Kepler conjecture on dense sphere packings in a combination of the HOL Light and Isabelle proof assistants. This paper constitutes the official published account of the now completed Flyspeck project
Proving Bounds for Real Linear Programs in Isabelle/HOL
Linear programming is a basic mathematical technique for optimizing a
linear function on a domain that is constrained by linear inequalities.
We restrict ourselves to linear programs on bounded domains that involve only
real variables. In the context of theorem proving, this restriction makes it
possible for any given linear program to obtain certificates from external
linear programming tools that help to prove arbitrarily precise bounds for the
given linear program. To this end, an explicit formalization of matrices
in Isabelle/HOL is presented, and how the concept of lattice-ordered rings
allows for a smooth integration of matrices with the axiomatic type classes of
Isabelle.
As our work is a contribution to the Flyspeck project, we demonstrate that via
reflection and with the above techniques it is now possible to prove bounds
for the linear programs arising in the proof of the Kepler conjecture
sufficiently fast
05021 Abstracts Collection -- Mathematics, Algorithms, Proofs
From 09.01.05 to 14.01.05, the Dagstuhl Seminar 05021 ``Mathematics, Algorithms, Proofs\u27\u27 was held in the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI),
Schloss Dagstuhl.
During the seminar, several participants presented their current
research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed. Abstracts of
the presentations given during the seminar as well as abstracts of
seminar results and ideas are put together in this paper. The first section
describes the seminar topics and goals in general.
LinkstFo extended abstracts or full papers are provided, if available
Mathematical practice, crowdsourcing, and social machines
The highest level of mathematics has traditionally been seen as a solitary
endeavour, to produce a proof for review and acceptance by research peers.
Mathematics is now at a remarkable inflexion point, with new technology
radically extending the power and limits of individuals. Crowdsourcing pulls
together diverse experts to solve problems; symbolic computation tackles huge
routine calculations; and computers check proofs too long and complicated for
humans to comprehend.
Mathematical practice is an emerging interdisciplinary field which draws on
philosophy and social science to understand how mathematics is produced. Online
mathematical activity provides a novel and rich source of data for empirical
investigation of mathematical practice - for example the community question
answering system {\it mathoverflow} contains around 40,000 mathematical
conversations, and {\it polymath} collaborations provide transcripts of the
process of discovering proofs. Our preliminary investigations have demonstrated
the importance of "soft" aspects such as analogy and creativity, alongside
deduction and proof, in the production of mathematics, and have given us new
ways to think about the roles of people and machines in creating new
mathematical knowledge. We discuss further investigation of these resources and
what it might reveal.
Crowdsourced mathematical activity is an example of a "social machine", a new
paradigm, identified by Berners-Lee, for viewing a combination of people and
computers as a single problem-solving entity, and the subject of major
international research endeavours. We outline a future research agenda for
mathematics social machines, a combination of people, computers, and
mathematical archives to create and apply mathematics, with the potential to
change the way people do mathematics, and to transform the reach, pace, and
impact of mathematics research.Comment: To appear, Springer LNCS, Proceedings of Conferences on Intelligent
Computer Mathematics, CICM 2013, July 2013 Bath, U
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