What is the NKS approach to mathematics?

by Matthew Szudzik

Carnegie Mellon University

Date

Friday, October 28, 2005

Time

4:00 p.m.

Place

LH102

Abstract:

Although the electronic computer was first envisioned as an aid in performing mathematical calculations, its influence has now reached beyond mathematics and into many unexpected places in peoples’ daily lives. It is somewhat ironic then that the practice of mathematics has changed little since antiquity; but is that about to change? Is a computer-induced revolution in mathematics just on the horizon? Based on the ideas in Stephen Wolfram's 2002 A New Kind of Science, Matthew Szudzik argues that the answer is “yes”, and outlines the issues that must be addressed for a mathematics of computation to become the foundation for science in the 21st century.

Biography:

Matthew Szudzik is Stephen Wolfram’s former research assistant, working on mathematical issues for A New Kind of Science from 1998 to 2000 and during the summer of 2001. Since 2003 he has served as an instructor at Wolfram's NKS Summer School, held each year at Brown University. Matthew Szudzik is currently a doctoral candidate in mathematical logic at Carnegie Mellon University, where he studies the foundations of mathematics.

Provided By:

This is the first in a sequence of four distinguished invited lectures presented by Indiana University Department of Computer Science as part of the 2005 Midwest NKS Conference. Matthew Szudzik’s talk will be followed by a reception, and a conference welcome address, in IMU State Room East, by Prof. Mike Dunn, Dean of the School of Informatics. On Saturday at 4:00pm, founder of algorithmic probability theory and of the universal theory of inductive inference, Prof. Ray J. Solomonoff will give a distinguished invited lecture on the relationships between algorithmic probability, artificial intelligence and NKS (in IMU Dogwood). Later that evening (8:00pm, IMU’s Frangipani) we have a conference keynote address from Stephen Wolfram, in direct from Boston, via videolink. This video address is made possible by the expert technical assistance of Mr. Roger Dooley from Wolfram Research and by that of Mr. Steven Egyhazi of Indiana University UITS. The conference’s closing keynote will be delivered on Sunday at 11:30am by Mr. Todd Rowland, PhD, Senior Research Associate with Wolfram Research and managing editor of the Complex Systems Journal. For more details and additional information visit the conference website:

http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~dgerman/2005midwestNKSconference/

This conference is organized and coordinated by the IU Conferences Office and the Computer Science Dept. (now part of the IU School of Informatics).