Easy Hard Problems

[packbat]

"What's the easiest unsolved math problem to explain?" I asked my dad tonight, just out of curiosity. I asked because the two obvious, famous answers - Fermat's last theorem and the four-color problem - are both (probably) solved.

Well, I can't guarantee the actual answer is here, but a few candidates he pointed me to:

• The P = NP problem: if the

Comments

[nationelectric]

Neat! Thanks!

[packbat]

Glad to be of transitive service!

(For the record, mathematicians suspect the answers are "no", "yes", "yes", "yes", and "no", respectively.)

[roaminrob]

P/NP took me a while to understand, back when I first heard about it. Your distillation is probably the best I've ever read, if slightly oversimplified.

[packbat]

Thank you - I do believe the Wikipedia page has something quite similar in there, though.