Delete comment from: Computational Complexity
This is, unfortunately, typical.
A recent article by Freeman Dyson in the Notices of the AMS (!) confused decision problems with search problems, and P with NP.
A 1994 book by Nobel prizewinner (in Physics) Philip Anderson claimed that NP stands for "not polynomial" and that linear programming is NP-complete.
A book by physicist Paul Davies claimed that quantum computers could solve the traveling salesman problem efficiently.
And mathematicians routinely assert claims like "There is no formula for the prime numbers" without bothering to inquire about what this would mean.
I would like to propose the following maxim, which I modestly call Shallit's Law of Computational Ignorance: "Whenever a non-computer scientist makes an assertion about computational complexity, it is nearly always wrong."
Mar 2, 2011, 3:22:16 PM
Posted to A good article on how science is publicized gets the science wrong