Mathematician Collapses All Functions to One Weird Formula

TL;DR

A Polish mathematician's preprint claims a single operation — exponential minus logarithm (eml) — can reconstruct every standard mathematical function.

Key Points

• 1.The eml function is defined as e^x minus log(y). A Polish mathematician's unpublished preprint argues this single operation can reproduce all standard math: addition, subtraction, multiplication, powers, and trigonometric functions through nested compositions.
• 2.Basic operations are derived by nesting eml into itself. Subtraction emerges directly; addition follows by negating y; multiplication comes from summing logarithms in the exponent; imaginary numbers, sine, cosine, and even pi are recoverable via the logarithm's branch cut at negative numbers.
• 3.Eml is proposed as the continuous-math analog of the NAND gate in digital logic. Just as NAND alone can build every logical gate in a computer, eml may serve as a universal building block for scientific computation — most practically for symbolic regression, where machines search for equations fitting data.
• 4.The paper is pre-print and not yet peer-reviewed, but the presenter considers it likely correct. The deeper philosophical question it raises is whether using one operation nested 20 times is genuinely simpler than using 10 distinct operations — a debate about how simplicity itself should be measured.