←back to thread

116 points baruchel | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.386s | source
1. kazinator ◴[] No.44373922[source]
Mathematics is dominated by chaos. Let's consider the real numbers. Most of them can't be written down. Most real-valued functions of just one variable cannot be written as a symbolic formula of that variable. Consider the n-body problem. The underlying rules of motion are easy to write down symbolically, but the resulting trajectories have no symbolic solution and are chaotic. Even in discrete math or number theory there is chaos. Like there is no pattern as to where on the integer number line the prime numbers land.