A great story about an unexpected result of crowdsourcing.
Timothy Gowers, Fields medal in maths, wondered if his blog readership might be able, collaboratively, to advance towards prooving an intractable theorem.
He posted an explanation of the problem, a series of rules on cooperation, and let his readers discuss.
His reasoning ?
Different people have different characteristics when it comes to research. Some like to throw out ideas, others to criticize them, others…