OpenAI's ChatGPT system has been making the rounds in technology and mainstream media these last few weeks. I’ve been toying around with it for a while now and have been pleased to find some surprising value.
Meaningful professional/personal uses aside, it’s a great sandbox to… well… mess around in. This is from one of my recent exchanges (my queries are in bold.)
Explain mathematical conjecture in simple terms.
A mathematical conjecture is an unproven statement or hypothesis about a mathematical concept or pattern. It is a statement that is believed to be true, but has not yet been proven through formal mathematical proof. Simple examples of mathematical conjecture include the Collatz Conjecture and the Goldbach Conjecture. These are statements that mathematicians have been trying to prove for many years, but have not yet been able to do so.
(To level-set, I truly appreciated its explanation. I can't remember what was driving the query at the moment, but I'm well beyond my school days and something of an embarrassment on the mathematics front.)
How would you describe it in the form of an analogy but In the voice of William Shakespeare?
A conjecture doth lie before us, like a riddle in a game,
Whose answer we doth seek, yet it doth remain the same.
A puzzle of the mind, a question yet to find,
A truth that doth elude us, in the shadows doth it bind.
I mean… I love the last line. “In the shadows doth it bind.” 🤌
It explains just after (surely expecting extra credit for its effort...)
The conjecture is like a riddle that we are trying to solve, it is a question or a statement that is yet to be proven true, like a puzzle of the mind, that we are trying to figure out. The truth is like a shadow that is hiding from us, it is eluding us, but we are trying to find it.