Millennium Prize Problems, can any of them be solved by a high school SAT taking student?(bare with me)?

Question

I know this looks like a yes/no question but I want to know why for either answer, non of these problems seems even close to math I or math II. but I'm just dreaming.

Answer 1

No not a chance...

To me mathematics was a combination of real intuitive thinking crossed with foreign language. Someone who just doesn't have the vocab or understanding of the symbols used in modern mathematics just cant get to the point of solving these problems.
To get to the understanding in how we express ourselves as mathematicians some real studying of mathematics is needed, and where we get that is in college taking classes. Regardless of how "smart" or bright you are as a person just diving into high end mathematics isn't gonna get you anywhere unless you understand our language of mathematics. I could put a multitude of symbols and formulas on this page and you would look at them and be boggled, but then once you take a class and are taught exactly what is meant by these expressions you could get some working knowledge of just what exactly is being stated.
Unless someone started very early in life and rigorously focused on mathematics there are really no ways high school students are going to have this sort of understanding. Please be aware that I'm not saying high school students are not intellectually developed enough to do this type of work, it's that they just don't have the experience and vocab to deal with high end mathematics.

Answer 2

The problem I find with the Millennium problems is that they are not readily understood by the general public. It would be hard for me to describe to you P and NP, the sets of "easy" and "hard" problems, for instance, or the concept of a "3-manifold", or what a zero of a complex-valued function is.

That is unfortunate in a way. When I was young, the major problems of the day could easily be described to lay people. One was whether a map can always be colored with 4 colors such that no two adjacent countries have the same color. Another was whether you could find integer solutions to x^n + y^n = z^n for n > 2 (and some other conditions).

Perhaps a collection of unsolved problems that can be understood by the public be set up. Not all easily stated problems have been solved. One such unsolved problem is the Goldbach conjecture, which states that every even integer > 2 is the sum of two prime numbers, each divisible only by themselves and 1.

By the way, you say "bare with me". "bare" means "naked". Do you mean "bear"?

Answer 3

The math courses necessary to even understand the problems are not taught in high schools, or even in undergrad courses for math majors in college. That said, it is not impossible for a gifted (as in prodigy IQ=180 type) teen-aged student for whom math is intuitive, and for whom learning PhD-level math is possible as a hobby, or by home study.

High school math is a basic tool, an introduction. Think of it as a screwdriver and pliers in a toolbox. The math in Millenium Prize problems is more like an electron microscope or cyclotron in the scale of tool sophistication.

Answer 4

No, I wouldn't imagine so - unless you're that Russian-American high school kid who just won the Westinghouse Science competition for some remarkable math. No, you won't have the tools you need to approach these problems until some serious college math - a few semesters of college calculus might get you close.

Answer 5

YESSSSS!. hey, i thought you were in university. i took the subject test though. i think i did best on the english section, the math II was hard. the biology test, i totally guessed. you can drink water during break. at least the people are supposed to let you. hope you did well.

Answer 6

You probably don't have the training to solve those types of problems.