The top student must be diligent

Xiao Yi rubbed his slightly aching head.

…

Chapter 154 Expectations of the Mathematical Community

Princeton University, editorial office of the Annals of Mathematics.

"Good morning, Ron."

"Good morning, Baker."

Arriving at the office on time, the editors of the Annals of Mathematics greeted each other.

"It's time to start the daily review work again. I wonder if we can find some valuable papers today."

Ron sat at his workstation and sighed.

"Haha, who said it wasn't?" Baker shrugged.

They receive an average of 500-1000 submissions per year, but only 30 to 50 will be published each year, which means the acceptance rate is only about 5% to 10%.

For editors who are not editors-in-chief or deputy editors-in-chief, they rarely see papers of good quality that can be passed. After all, many of the authors of papers that can be passed are big names. If these big names want to submit papers, they will definitely contact their editors-in-chief directly and take the fast track. After all, who doesn't want their papers to be passed as soon as possible? Therefore, all the papers of big names are read by the editors-in-chief, and the task of ordinary editors is to screen out those junk submissions. There are also some folk mathematicians who submit papers claiming to have proved the twin prime conjecture and the Goldbach conjecture. Oh, the twin prime conjecture has become a thing of the past. After all, it has been proved, which makes those folk mathematicians lose a big position. However, this has caused the Goldbach conjecture to become the hardest hit area again. Of course, for editors like them, such papers are quite interesting, at least they can have fun. "Well, let me see what submissions there are today." Ron entered the mailbox and said. After briefly browsing the titles of the manuscripts, he soon couldn't hold it anymore.

"Hahaha~ Baker, come and see!"

He waved to Ron next to him.

"What happened?"

Ron walked over with a puzzled look on his face, glanced at the title on the mailbox, and suddenly he couldn't hold it anymore.

There were actually two papers titled "Goldbach's Conjecture" in the mailbox, and they were connected.

"You are so lucky!" Baker laughed and patted Ron on the shoulder.

According to their experience, these two proofs of the Goldbach conjecture must have been sent by amateur mathematicians.

Although they occasionally receive submissions from amateur mathematicians, it is very rare for them to receive two papers at once, which means there are two fun things to read.

"Why don't you let me read one?" Baker said.

"No no no." Ron waved his fingers: "This is my workload!"

These editors also have indicators, how many manuscripts they have to read every day.

For them, such fun submissions are simply a benefit of work.

"Okay." Baker could only sigh regretfully.

But he didn't say much, and then urged: "Open the first one and take a look."

Ron nodded and clicked on the first submission. Well, the author's name was unfamiliar, which made him more certain that this was a folk mathematician.

Clicking in and taking a look, wow, there are only 3 pages in total.

3 pages to prove the Goldbach conjecture, right?

The two editors couldn't suppress their smiles more and more.

Looking down, well, the author first listed a bunch of examples that met the conclusion of the Goldbach conjecture, such as [4=2+2], [6=3+3], [8=3+5].

There were more than one page of such equations. Just when Ron and Baker thought that the author was going to say that based on a large number of such examples, and then based on induction, it can be known that: since so many observed even numbers can be expressed as the sum of two prime numbers, it is speculated that all even numbers can meet this condition.

But what surprised them a little was that the author used a recursive method later.

But... this recursive method was not very clever.

He assumed that for a certain even number 2n, it was known that all even numbers less than 2n met the Goldbach conjecture, and then proved that 2n also met the conjecture, and then claimed that if 2n=p+q did not hold, the appropriate prime number pair could be found by adjusting the values ​​of p and q.

And then...

And then that was it!

He just said that the proof was completed!

Three pages of content, that's all.

There was not even a reference to the literature.

"That's it?" Baker's eyes widened.

"That's it." Ron shrugged.

What else could they say?

All they could say was that it was expected.

Baker shook his head helplessly, and then urged: "Hurry up and take a look at the second article!"

Ron didn't say anything nonsense and opened the second article.

I hope the second article can bring them more fun.

"Let's see who the author of this paper is..."

When they turned their attention to the author's name, the two of them fell silent.

"This..."

"Hmm..."

Finally, they looked at each other.

"Why is this author Xiao Yi?!"

If Xiao Yi sent them a paper, shouldn't he contact their editor-in-chief, Professor Sanak, directly?

And the most important thing is...

"He proved the Goldbach conjecture?!"

The two looked at each other and immediately saw the shock in each other's eyes.

How long has it been since the twin prime conjecture was proved?

Now he has proved the Goldbach conjecture again?

Baker said: "What if it is just someone with the same name... or someone pretending to be Xiao Yi?"

Ron shook his head and said: "Let's take a look at the paper first. I think we can tell at a glance whether it is his paper."

Baker nodded: "That's right."

Papers written by professional mathematicians are completely different from those written by amateur mathematicians. You can tell at a glance.

So he opened the paper and read it.

Just by reading the abstract, they can be sure that this is the paper written by Xiao Yi himself.

The professionalism here is not something that amateur mathematicians can copy.

The two editors were silent for a while, and then looked at each other.

"Should we tell Professor Sanak about the paper?"

"I think so."

Ron nodded.

Looking at this paper, it was submitted four days ago.

My God, such an important submission, they actually saw it only today.

Did Xiao Yi make a mistake when submitting it?

And why didn't he post it on arxiv first?

They probably never thought that all the reasons were just because Xiao Yi wanted to let it rot for a few days.

...

Soon the two ran to their editor-in-chief's office.

At this time, Peter Sanak had just come to work. When he saw the two people coming in, he raised his eyebrows and asked with a smile: "Ron, Baker, is there anything going on? Of course, except for taking a leave, I just checked my email, but we still have more than 40 manuscripts to read."

"Hey, how can you think of us like this? Of course, we won't take a leave." Ron said.

Baker said: "Don't worry, if we finish reading today, it may become more than 50 tomorrow."

Sanak glared at Baker unhappily, "Don't know how to say something nice, well, explain the purpose of your coming to me."