Appalachian Spring

I would like to provide a brief history of the equation-hacking program I created, for anyone who is interested.

The idea first came to me over ten years ago, while slowly recovering from a random act of violence on the streets of my hometown. At the urging of a friend, I decided to put my programming skills to the test, and by 2011 I had a fully functioning executable, which could be compiled and run on any operating system.

I had two choices at that point: publish my program, or put it to work on a few data sets, and then publish its results. I decided upon the latter, as there did not seem to be too much public interest in the field of computational mathematics at that point. The average data set took about 3 months to run on a 64-bit quad-core computer, and so that was what I spent the next eight years or so doing. It was a long, arduous, and painstaking process, but also very rewarding.

I cannot claim credit for the original idea of using algorithms to partially solve mathematical proofs, as that dates back to Alan Turing and the founding of the modern computer. I do however think that my work has contributed to a renewal of interest in the subject, which has for decades been relegated to the realm of science fiction. One university professor after another had given lectures explaining that computer-assisted proofs were theoretically impossible, and that they violated the basic principles of computer science. But like most Americans, I hated being told what I could not do, and so their attempts at dissuasion had the opposite effect, encouraging me to pursue the subject until I either proved them wrong, or died trying.

The program itself can be vastly improved upon, which is why I'm still hesitant to release it publicly, as I consider it an unfinished work. But if anyone out there would like to lend me assistance, I would be happy to share my findings, provided such a person can a) prove they really are who they claim to be, and b) provide assurances that it will be a true collaboration, as my naturally suspicious and paranoid disposition demands nothing less.