Doron Zeilberger's Rebuttal to Yuri Tschinkel's Fake Referee Report

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From: zeilberg@math.rutgers.edu
To: yuri.tschinkel@googlemail.com

Professor Tschinkel:

 So my conjecture was right, and the referee is you yourself. What do you know about
combinatorial game theory? What do you know about experimental-yet-rigorous mathematics?
As for casual style, it is much more attractive than the usual boring style
of a "structured" paper.

 The paper can be read on at least two levels. On the lower level it solves a twelve-year-old conjecture
in Combinatorial game theory. On a higher level it is a great illustration of a potentially
revolutionary methodology.

The paper explains very well both the specific problem, and the bigger picture.

     This is a revolutionary approach, where the computer does all the phases, and is  MUCH MORE INTERESTING
(methodologically) THAN YOUR kind of "experimental mathematics" where the computer is used merely as a calculator.

  I am very disappointed at you for not seeing the beauty of this paper. It means that
you are a narrow-minded specialist who can only appreciate conventional papers in your
own narrow specialty. Thanks for the kind words about my contributions, unfortunately, I can't
reciprocate, and while I believe that you are  a great expert in your own little acre of
mathematics, you don't have the vision and the scope to be editor-in-chief of an innovative
journal, and I am disappointed at Klaus Peters for making such a poor choice.

 I am sorry that we published A=B with him, and I will never have anything to do with your journal
or with AK Peters. I will also post in my webpage the fact that this masterpiece was
rejected by you.

  As for nit-picking spelling errors, this can be fixed, and we never got a referee report.
This report was cooked by you, after my message, with a few nit-picking comments.


Also our paper should be read in conjunction with the webpage refereed to in the paper,
and with the computer-generated output, and with the source-code.
Can you read Maple? Can you program in Maple? If not, you are not qualified to be
editor-in-chief of Experimental Mathematics.


 Anyway, I no longer want you to reconsider. We will submit the paper elsewhere, since it is
hopeless to deal with a narrow-minded pedant like you. If and when the editor-in-chief will change,
we might reconsider.


          Worst Wishes

                     Doron Zeilberger






-----------Yuri Tschinkel's message and my response----------------------
>From yuri.tschinkel@googlemail.com  Fri Feb  1 22:09:42 2008

>Dear Prof. Zeilberger,

>First of all, please be assured that, without knowing you personally,
>I greatly admire you for many brilliant contributions to mathematics and for
>your responsible service to the mathematical community, as a member of
>several
>editorial boards and organizing committees. I am aware of your strong
>dedication to
>Experimental Mathematics, to the field and to the journal. Going through
>the records I saw that you gave advice on several submissions to the
>journal.
>We greatly appreciate your support and look forward to continuing our
>fruitful collaboration.


Don't even try to ever contact me again.

>Here are some remarks concerning your paper with Thanatipanonda.

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>1. The manuscript lacks basic structural elements of a mathematical paper:
>introduction to the problem, motivation, definition of main terms,
>statements of results, conclusions. It reads like a comment to a computer
>program.

It is written in a somewhat unorthodox style, but is very lucid. As for definitions,
we refer the reader to the classic text Winning Ways (republished by AK Peters),
and it is a waste of paper and bytes to repeat standard definitions.

>2. The paper is incoherent:
> ?  p. 2. I cannot make sense of the second half of the page. E.g.,
 >   "We will not use any shorthand notation..." - why is this relevant?

Like we stated, it assumes basic knowledge of combinatorial game theory, that
can be looked up in Winning Ways.

>   Comments on p. 3 (e.g., "we believe that present methodology...")
>   belong in the introduction; you never say what the method IS and what
>exactly you explain through examples.

The examples speak for themselves.

>   p. 7 "We now turn our attention to class B. ... We will discuss this in
>the appendix".
>   Please read your Section 4.

OK, that's a good minor comment, that can be easily fixed.

>3. The paper is written in a very casual style:

That is much more attractive than the usual formal style.

(For comparison I just looked at your content-wise interesting paper about a
proof of some conjecture of Manin. Boy is the style BORING

Let ...

Let ...

blah blah blah

Theorem

Definition

Theorem

Lemma

 Blah blah blah

  BORING! )


>  p. 3 mere number crunching / if we are lucky / the beauty and novelty of
>our approach / dramatically /

What's wrong with that?

>  p. 5, 6  crank out data
>  p. 7 elbow-room

What's wrong with that?

>  p. 9 "One could find conjectures by hand and feed them to the subfunctions
>in Prove" - what does this mean?

Read the webpage accompanying this article, and the source code, and the examples


>Finally, please check the spelling:

>p. 2  lend on a square
>p. 4  ...then it return NULL
>p. 7 recurrnces

Thanks, these are valid comments that I thank you for, but no reason to reject the paper
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>I cannot agree that this paper is "... one of your greatest masterpieces...".

Too bad, but you are not qualified to judge it. First, your own specialty is far removed
from the subject matter of this paper, and second, your conception of experimental mathematics
is the naive straightforward one of using the computer as a mere calculator and number-cruncher
(forgive the "casual" language)

>In my opinion, the paper is not suitable for publication in Experimental
>Mathematics in its present form.


I agree that we need to correct the few spelling errors, but modulo few minor things
it is very suitable, had there been a more open-minded editor-in-chief.
With the current editor-in-chief, we agree that the paper does not conform to
his narrow-minded expectations.


>Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

I don't have any more questions. I will post your comments, and my response, linked to the
webpage of this paper, and the future will decide who is right and who is wrong.


>Sincerely,

>Yuri Tschinkel
>Editor-in-Chief
>Experimental Mathematics

Very sincerely

Doron Zeilberger
Rejected author



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