A register of registers, third artifact
The Classification Record
The proof of the Classification of Finite Simple Groups runs to tens of thousands of pages across half a century and a hundred authors. It is accepted. What nobody keeps is a living account of the record it rests on: what was cited, whether those citations were ever published, and whether the account is still current.
507
references censused
across two foundational bibliographies, machine-readable
8.1%
not published literature
a currency statement, never a correctness one
7
fixable defects in the record
all repairable from public records, none touching the maths
1
hedge that dies under compression
candour survives where experts address experts
Why this one is different
The other two registers on this site record claims to open problems. This one is the opposite. Here the theorem is settled and the mathematicians are right. The subject is the record, and the finding is quiet: a proof is only ever as current as the last time someone updated its paper trail by hand.
Philosophers of mathematics have argued that whether the Classification is really understood by the community is an empirical question, not a matter of declaration. A census of what the proof actually cites, and of how faithfully that record has been carried forward, is one instrument for answering it. This is that instrument, pointed at the proof's own bibliographies.
The headline, in one picture
Published versus non-published references, by bibliography
Non-published is a currency statement, not a correctness one. A thesis or preprint is not an error; it is a reference the record stopped tracking.
Show the numbers
| Bibliography | Published | Not published | Total | Not published % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Surveys 172 (2011) | 334 | 18 | 352 | 5.1% |
| Gorenstein 1986 survey | 132 | 23 | 155 | 14.8% |
Where to go next
- The census: all 507 references, graded.
- The eighteen: what became of the non-published tail.
- The vanishing hedge: how the completeness claim ages as it travels.
- Integrity catches: seven fixable defects in the record.
- Method: how it was built, and what it is not.