Famous conjecture or unsolved problem that could be plausibly proven/solved by freshman mathematician?

Question

Is there any conjecture or famous unsolved problem, that doesn't require much prerequisite knowledge and could be plausibly proven / solved by freshman?

My hero is average freshman in mathematics, that proves a famous conjecture by mistaking it for homework, like George Dantzig.

Maybe something in combinatorics if this reddit comment is true

A few years ago at my university the final test on combinatorics included some unsolved problems. The students were supposed to have enough insight to realize which problems were the easy solvable ones and which ones were a waste of time to try to solve.

One of the students (this course is usually taken by first or second year students) actually solved one of the unsolved problems. It wasn't one of the really famous unsolved problems included on the test, but his result was certainly unknown.

The conclusion was somewhat less dramatic, though: the professors thought about his solution for some time (months) and after they were convinced that there isn't a loophole in the argument, the result was published and eventually became the basis for this guy's PhD. research.

Problems in combinatorics are certainly easier to approach on this level, since their solution usually involves some clever trick, rather than extensive application of deep theorems.

Answer 1

Others have mentioned some famous conjectures such as the Collatz conjecture and P = NP, but I think it's awfully unlikely that a freshman math student would be able to solve such a problem. About the Collatz conjecture, Paul Erdős famously said that "Mathematics may not be ready for such problems"; and about P = NP, Scott Aaronson wrote that "any proof will need to overcome specific and staggering obstacles" and "we do have reason to think it will be extremely difficult."

Instead, I suggest a Diophantine equation. A Diophantine equation is simply any polynomial equation (that is, an equation built out of variables, constants, addition, subtraction, and multiplication), where the question is, "Can we make this equation true by setting each variable to a whole number?"

A simple example of a Diophantine equation is $x^2 + y^2 = 5$. This Diophantine equation has 8 solutions. One of them is $x = 2$ and $y = 1$. The other 7 solutions can be found by switching $x$ and $y$ around, and by negating one or both of them.

It certainly is plausible that a Diophantine equation could baffle mathematicians for years, but then be solved by a freshman math student. And I have an anecdote to prove it!

In 1969, D. J. Lewis wrote a paper about Diophantine equations, in which he wrote that the equation $x^3 + 5 = 117 y^3$ is known to have at most 18 solutions, but the exact number is not known. Two other mathematicians studied the equation and, in 1971, they published a short but difficult proof that there are no solutions. Finally, in 1973, another mathematician found an astonishingly simple proof of the same fact! The proof is:

The quantity $x^3 + 5$ is never a multiple of 9, but the quantity $117 y^3$ is always a multiple of 9, so there are no solutions.

(Source for the above two paragraphs: Gerry Myerson's answer on "Awfully sophisticated proof for simple facts.") Gerry points out that Lewis's equation, as printed, may have been a typo.)

So, although this particular equation was never famous, it did give some mathematicians quite a bit of difficulty, before, years later, someone found a simple proof that easily could have been found by a freshman math student.

So, which Diophantine equation should you use in your story? The paper "Some open problems about diophantine equations" contains one in particular which I think looks pretty promising. The problem that your hero solves could be:

Find all integer solutions to $x^4+x^2+y^4+y^2=z^4+z^2$.

Answer 2

Since you're interested in something currently unsolved, you don't really care about how protagonist will solve it, only that he does so, let's go for something extremely simple, simple enough that even a reader with only basics of mathematics can understand: Collatz conjecture (also known as 3n + 1 Conjecture)

"Consider the following operation on an arbitrary positive integer:

If the number is even, divide it by two.

If the number is odd, triple it and add one.

...

Now form a sequence by performing this operation repeatedly, beginning with any positive integer, and taking the result at each step as the input at the next.(Or in human language - keep repeating the previous process with new number again and again and again...)

...

The Collatz conjecture is: This process will eventually reach the number 1, regardless of which positive integer is chosen initially."

This is simple looking, yet currently unsolved problem, which looks simple enough for a reader who doesn't understand too much math as something solvable by a genius student.

A real student of mathematics or a professor will, reading your fiction, probably exclaim "That's not how it works, it's basically sure thing that any proof of this conjecture, if this conjecture is even provable, will be hundreds of pages long!"

But most of the audience will not find anything wrong with your protagonist solving this on ~6 pages as a homework. Only thing that might cause suspension of belief is that the guy has never heard of this conjecture before and confused it for homework.

Answer 3

Goldbach's conjecture states that every even integer greater than two can be written as a sum of two primes. If one could find a counterexample the problem would be solved (although currently all candidates smaller than the order of 10^18 have been tried). Alternatively if one could give a formula the problem could also be solved.

Answer 4

A perfect number is a positive integer N such that N is the sum of its divisors (other than itself). For example,

6 = 1 + 2 + 3

28 = 1 + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14

Question: Does there exist an odd perfect number?

Answer 5

You already have some good answers here, but let me suggest one other possibility that might work for you. Rather than an unsolved problem, you might look at a couple of cases in which there is a proof of something that can be stated simply, but the proof is unsatisfying in some way. Either the proof is so complex that it is accessible only to (extreme) specialists, or the proof is so vast that a computer is required to manage it.

Fermat's Last Theorem is in the first category and The Four Color Theorem is in the second. When I was a young mathematician, both of these were (widely believed) conjectures, but unproven. Now they have proofs.

But a simple proof of either, a proof whose details can be easily grasped by, say, a college student (and doesn't require a computer), would, itself, be a breakthrough.

Answer 6

The biggest unsolved problem in computing is “can NP-Complete problems be solved in polynomial time?” NPC problems are a whole class of searching problems that we hit regularly in real world operations. Polynomial time basically means “a reasonable amount of time even on large problem sets”.

Most researchers think the answer is “no.” Proving “no” is really hard. Proving “yes” on the other hand just requires someone writing the program that does it. The student might not even realize they’ve done anything amazing.

If you do have your protagonist solve this problem, it’ll be a pretty serious kick in the pants for performance of all computing tech in your world.

Answer 7

To add on to the list of statements that are simple to understand: The Twin Primes Conjecture.

"Twin primes" are pairs of primes that differ by $2$, like $3$ and $5$, or $11$ and $13$. The open question is "Are there infinitely many pairs of twin primes?"

Answer 8

I would go with finding a non-trivial zero to Riemann's Zeta function, thus effectively proving (by counterexample) that Riemann's Hypothesis is false.

Pick a solution with the form $n/(2n+1)+xi$, with insanely large $n$ and very large but nice looking $x$.

Make it such that it is possible to simply check that the solution is indeed a zero of the Zeta function, thus the student would be easily believed, as false solutions to the problem pop-up very often, and even checking a correct proof could take years.

This problem fits two things that are nice for a narrative:

1. It is said that the one to solve this problem is destined to mathematical greatness.
2. Even a wrong or fuzzy method could still provide a verifiable non-trivial solution, and thus it wouldn't take long before the consequences of the discover start taking place.

The downsides are:

1. It is a rather complex conjecture to be understood by someone who only knows about high-school math. (probably most of the potential audience)

2. The hypothesis is widely believed to be true. (though it being proven false would have a much bigger impact).

Another "solution" would be finding a polynomial algorithm to find hash collisions for SHA2, as far as I know, there isn't a proof that such an algorithm would be impossible to exist, but a lot of cryptography based systems rely on the fact that it is too computationally expensive to create arbitrary hash collisions. This may or may not create different ramifications for the story, but it is something that a teacher wouldn't ask in a test as a "unsolved problem", it might be part of some research task to find methods that are better than brute-force (slightly, as has been done with other hashing algorithms), then by accident finding something much better than brute-force, or some algorithm that "just happens" to run fast very often, even if it could take very long (akin to Quicksort algorithm).

Answer 9

I would argue: any problem that can be conveyed simply without excessive higher-level math would be fair game.

Keep in mind, solving a conjecture/problem often doesn't depend on extreme math proficiency, but being able to creatively approach the problem from an unusual angle that hasn't been attempted before.

Here's a great example, from the 2011 International Math Olympiad. It was given to the brightest students in the world, yet this problem stumped most of them. And it wasn't because the problem required extreme proficiency with mathematics, but reaching an understanding of a core dynamic of how the system worked - and then simply exploiting part of that dynamic. The actual 'math' of the situation is almost an afterthought.

So let me give you some hypothetical examples:

"Yeah, I solved the 3 body physics problem. I mean, I know we were supposed to integrate over position, but that wasn't working out for me. So I tried to integrate over time and distance squared and I figured out that a lot of the complexity just disappears."

...

"Yeah, I solved the Collatz Conjecture. I thought to myself: why use a solid base? I mean, instead of each digit representing a constant number to an increasing power, why not make the digits correspond to prime numbers? So the number '3011' really represents 3x5+1x2+1x1. And when you look at the patterns in that number scheme? The patterns are pretty obvious - the conjecture is pretty trivially obvious."

...

"Oh, RSA decryption? Yeah, the whole 'Cannot find large factors' seemed kinda weird. I mean, we can express the large number in whatever base we want, right? So why not convert that large number into each of the first dozen or so prime bases. Then we guess at the lowest significant digits of the solution in each of those bases, correlate all those prime bases' guesses together, and get a pretty accurate picture for what the divisor must be."

Note: None of those hypotheticals are actually true. But it shows how an oblique, non-standard approach to a problem might be what actually 'cracks' the conjecture.