ARTi
Which computer did Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer use?

The million-dollar mystery of elliptic curves

Chapter 1

The playground of elliptic curves

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Chapter 2

The million-dollar guess at Cambridge

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Chapter 3

The infinite hunt and the prize

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YOUR GOAL

Master of The million-dollar mystery of elliptic curves

Ch 2 · The million-dollar guess at Cambridge
diego

diego The genius guess of Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer

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diego Counting clockwork points

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The magical L-function

diego Mathematicians built a special mathematical bridge called an L-function to pack up all their data.

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Counting clockwork points

diego To find infinite patterns, they first counted points in limited, clock-like arithmetic systems.

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The Million-Dollar Loop
BETA

diego The Million-Dollar Loop

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Fun Fact

Computer crunching: The EDSAC 2 computer used by Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer in 1960 was about 100,000 times slower than a modern smartphone but still cracked the pattern.

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Glossary
conjecture (noun)
An opinion or conclusion formed on the basis of incomplete information. In 1965, Bryan Birch and Peter Swinnerton-Dyer used a Cambridge computer to formulate their famous conjecture.

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Gossip

Would you trust a computer's math proof if humans couldn't double-check it?

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Quiz

What was the name of the early computer used by Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer to test their conjecture?

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diego The heavy metal computer of 1960

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Quiz

In which decade did Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer formulate their famous conjecture?

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diego The magical L-function

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Quiz

According to the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture, what value must the L-function have at s=1 for the curve to have infinite rational points?

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Quiz

In the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture, what is the 'order of vanishing' of the L-function at s=1 conjectured to equal?

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Quiz

What kind of clock-like arithmetic did Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer use to simplify their elliptic curve point calculations?

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Quiz

Which university's computer did Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer use to run their calculations?

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Quiz

What mathematical function packages all of an elliptic curve's prime number data into one object?

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Quiz

Instead of fractions, what did Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer count to find their elliptic curve pattern?

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