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Mathematics

Breakthrough in fiendishly hard puzzle has mathematicians partying

Calculating Ramsey numbers is so difficult that one mathematician once said he'd rather fight off an alien invasion. Now, mathematicians have made the first major advance in nearly a century

By Alex Wilkins

21 March 2023

People partying

The key to a successful party is a good mix of people

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Mathematicians have made a breakthrough on an incredibly difficult problem in combinatorics, the study of combinations. It is the first significant advance in nearly a century for our understanding of Ramsey numbers, which can be used to describe the minimum size of a party where cliques of a certain size can or can’t exist.

Named after mathematician Frank Ramsey, these numbers deal with the possible relationships between nodes on a mathematical network called a graph, which are a …

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