In the 1960s, mathematician and computer scientist Gregory Chaitin published a landmark paper in the field of algorithmic information theory in the Journal of the ACM – and he was only a teenager. Since then he’s explored mathematics, computer science, and even gotten a mathematical constant named after him. Robert J. Marks leads the discussion with Professor Gregory Chaitin on Read More ›
Listen in as Robert J. Marks picks the mind of Professor Gregory Chaitin about Chaitin’s number – a number that has been called “mystical and magical”. How does this number work? Why do some people call it “Chaitin’s constant”? What is the usefulness of philosophizing in mathematics? Show Notes Additional Resources
In last week’s podcast,, “The Chaitin Interview II: Defining Randomness,” Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks interviewed mathematician and computer scientist Gregory Chaitin on how best to describe true randomness but also on what he recalls of Ray Solomonoff (1926–2009), described in his obit as the “Founding Father of algorithmic information theory.” https://episodes.castos.com/mindmatters/Mind-Matters-125-Gregory-Chaitin.mp3 This portion begins at 10:30 min. A partial transcript, Show Notes, and Additional Resources follow. Gregory Chaitin (pictured): Ray Solomonoff was interested in prediction but I was more interested in looking at a given string of bits and asking, does it have structure or not, and the incompleteness results regarding this question. For example, most strings of bits have no structure, according to this definition. They Read More ›