What is the P vs. NP Problem and My Quest to Solve It?

[David Carroll]

Just found the new member discussion. My life is not very interesting. I was a nuclear reactor operator in the US Navy. After leaving the Navy, I made a ton of mistakes with my life, including acquiring a heroin addiction which drug (no pun intended) out for several years. I was recently diagnosed as being on the Autism Spectrum. I have discovered a new found love of mathematics. One of my life goals is to solve the P vs. NP problem and win the Millennial prize of one million dollars. I truly believe that P does indeed equal NP and I want to prove it.

Let's see. What else? I've lived most of my life in Michigan, but circumstances brought me to West Virginia and I absolutely hate it here. It's a very culturally oppressive part of the country and a spirit of anti-intellectualism and anti-art pervades here. I plan on moving to Philadelphia in the near future, in sha' Allah.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

nuclear reactor operator in the US Navy

That sounds very interesting! We have a nice nuclear engineering area here.

recently diagnosed as being on the Autism Spectrum

Non uncommon here :)

I truly believe that P does indeed equal NP and I want to prove it.

Looking forward to your discussions

plan on moving to Philadelphia

I like Philly, lots of history!

 

[David Carroll]

Pleased to meet you, Greg!

 

[David Carroll]

About the P vs. NP problem: I've noticed that if a certain step is performed on the members of the set of numbers (in the subset sum problem), an important and relevant result follows. I don't want to be too specific because I get paranoid that someone will steal my idea and beat me to the Millennial prize...haha. Whether or not this step can be translated to the other NP-complete problems I don't know. I'll have to get a textbook on computation theory.

 

[Doug Huffman]

Hello David. I wuz an EO nuke but stayed in the community to retire as a NS 0989 028 5000 Shift Test Engineer. Unfortunately I am risk averse and have made few notable errors and only moderate success.

I believe your concern about competition is valid for a friend's experience. 'Uncle' Al Schwartz had a presence here.

Aleikhem shalom ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

 

[David Carroll]

Hi, Doug. Thanks for responding. I myself made terrible choices for my life right when I got out of the Navy 13 years ago. I never made applications to plants or anywhere else in the nuclear field. I think it's been too long since training for me to do anything career-wise at this point. Actually, I was an MM, but it's more simple to say "reactor operator" since nobody would know what I meant by "nuclear-rated machinist's mate" even if it's misleading.

 

[davenn]

Hi David

welcome aboard :)
I have no idea about the " P vs. NP problem" without doing some googling, have no idea what field of physics it belongs to haha
presumably not in the fields I dabble in ... geology, astronomy or electronics

cheers
Dave

 

[David Carroll]

Thank you, davenn. The problem is in the field of algorithms and computation.