A new paper establishes a long-conjectured bound about the size of the overlap between sets of lines and points. The post Mathematicians Cross the Line to Get to the Point first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Imagine an endless piece of blank paper covered with a smattering of lines pointing every which way. A gust of wind comes and sprinkles dust on top of the paper — in effect covering the lines with points. Say a helpful mathematician tells you how much dust covers any one line. Based on that one piece of information, can you figure out how much dust is there in total? While there isn’t enough…