This should be the final thread (for now, at least) for the Polymath8 project (encompassing the original Polymath8a paper, the nearly finished Polymath8b paper, and the retrospective paper), superseding the previous Polymath8b thread (which was quite full) and the Polymath8a/retrospective thread (which was more or less inactive).

On Polymath8a: I talked briefly with Andrew Granville, who is handling the paper for Algebra & Number Theory, and he said that a referee report should be coming in soon.  Apparently length of the paper is a bit of an issue (not surprising, as it is 163 pages long) and there will be some suggestions to trim the size down a bit.

In view of the length issue at A&NT, I’m now leaning towards taking up Ken Ono’s offer to submit the Polymath8b paper to the new open access journal “Research in the Mathematical Sciences“.  I think the paper is almost ready to be submitted (after the current participants sign off on it, of course), but it might be worth waiting on the Polymath8a referee report in case the changes suggested impact the 8b paper.

Finally, it is perhaps time to start working on the retrospective article, and collect some impressions from participants.  I wrote up a quick draft of my own experiences, and also pasted in Pace Nielsen’s thoughts, as well as a contribution from an undergraduate following the project (Andrew Gibson).  Hopefully we can collect a few more (either through comments on this blog, through email, or through Dropbox), and then start working on editing them together and finding some suitable concluding points to make about the Polymath8 project, and what lessons we can take from it for future projects of this type.