Over the past few days, I’ve been slowly working towards the solution of probably the last significant problem before I finish my degree.

It’s a particularly delicate calculation which, at the moment, spans something like 20 pages of mathematics. The problem is that the last step is to verify that the calculation fits with numerical simulations.

Why is it a problem?

Well, if I’ve made a mistake somewhere within those twenty pages, it could take a long, long time to find it. In this case, the numerics would only tell me whether I’m right or wrong. It won’t offer much insight beyond that.

It’s like spending a year planning and then finally building a house of cards, with the goal of supporting some weight. Verification is particularly simple (it’ll stand or it won’t). But if your house of cards comes crashing down, it can take a long, long time to figure out the weakness in the construction.

If you’re a programmer, it’s like detecting a bug within thousands and thousands of lines of code. A programmer can usually divide and conquer (reduce the program down to its essentials, and slowly corner the bug). But that luxury doesn’t seem to be available to me.