Massively collaborative science: the success of the Polymath experience
The Polymath Project differed from traditional large-team collaborations in other parts of science and industry. In such collaborations, work is usually divided up in a static, hierarchical way. In the Polymath Project, everything was out in the open, so anybody could potentially contribute to any aspect. This allowed ideas to be explored from many different perspectives and allowed unanticipated connections to be made.
Timothy Gowers & Michael Nielsen report in Nature about a successfull project in mathematics, the Polymath Project:
“The specific aim of the Polymath Project was to find an elementary proof of a special case of the density Hales–Jewett theorem (DHJ), which is a central result of combinatorics, the branch of mathematics that studies discrete structures.”
Started at the end of January, the project lead to substantial results in less than two months:
“Progress came far faster than anyone expected. On 10 March, Gowers announced that he was confident that the Polymath participants had found an elementary proof of the special case of DHJ, but also that, very surprisingly (in the light of experience with similar problems), the argument could be straightforwardly generalized to prove the full theorem. A paper describing this proof is being written up, along with a second paper describing related results.”
More details about the whole process here.