Even Geniuses Make Math Mistakes: A Survey of 1,000+ Published Mathematical Errors Detected by Automated Structural Verification
We present the BOBSUM Error Registry, a curated dataset of over 1,000 published mathematical errors detected by an automated structural verification pipeline. BOBSUM operates as a mathematical truth detector: it encodes mathematical claims into a compact representation space and applies structural consistency tests including dimensional analysis, congruence checking, and algebraic simplification to determine whether a claim is internally self-consistent. The registry spans nearly four centuries of scientific publishing, from Pierre de Fermat's correspondence in 1640 to arXiv preprints submitted in 2026. Sources include 25 widely-used physics and mathematics textbooks, 11 arXiv preprints, and the published works of several Nobel laureates and Fields Medal recipients. Sign errors are the single most common failure mode. The verification service is publicly accessible at https://bobsums.com.
Authors
- Stephen Clark Kinney
Institutions
- ASE Holdings (United States) (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
- Published
- 2026-05-12
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20139284
- Primary Topic
- Mathematics, Computing, and Information Processing
- Type
- preprint