A simple information theoretical proof of the Fueter-Pólya Conjecture

09/26/2018

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by   Pieter W. Adriaans, et al.

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We present a simple information theoretical proof of the Fueter-Pólya Conjecture: there is no polynomial pairing function that defines a bijection between the set of natural numbers N and its product set N^2 of degree higher than 2. We introduce the concept of information efficiency of a function as the balance between the information in the input and the output. We show that 1) Any function defining a computable bijection between an infinite set and the set of natural numbers is information efficient, 2) the Cantor functions satisfy this condition, 3) any hypothetical higher order function defining such a bijection also will be information efficient, i.e. it stays asymtotically close to the Cantor functions and thus cannot be a higher order function.