That handwriting tho woah!
Who Was Ramanujan?
41–50 of 130 posts
Re: Who Was Ramanujan?
#42I am very proud that I am sharing the same native place [Erode]
I happened to read about his life story before quite sometime. It was full of wonders. During his life-period, He used to go to some calm place(temple) with few notebooks and after few minutes having his eyes closed, would start to write solving problems in his notebooks. Those periods the opportunities for exploring was very difficult. Since, the people were very conservative to accept him for being unique(different from others). Because, he was very genius in mathematics unlike other subjects. The society where he belongs did not acknowledge(unable to understand his works) him for what he was deserved. He could not get even the normal job to survive. His family became upset for his incomplete qualification(in terms of degree). So, he absconded from his place. In fact he tried to commit suicide too. Later period fortunately few people came to understand the value of his efforts few bits. With help of few elite members in society, he put the letter to Mr Hardy which was the turning point for all mathematician's life which gave full of challenges to understand his work. He was moved to UK. There his health was not supportive, then he died very early.
P.S: If he was given full freedom to function himself in earlier times, The maths society would have gotten more and more theorems and evolution would have been quite speedy.
Whatta truly inspiring life he lived.
[Erode] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erode)
Re: Who Was Ramanujan?
#43Mixed feelings about this article: 1. A fine easy read about Ramanujan and Hardy. It was well-summarized and nicely written, with excellent pictures that I had not seen before. 2. A disgusting vein of self-promotion runs throughout the article. Much has been said about Stephan Wolfram's occasionally self-centered behavior, and many of his writings have a self-aggrandizing tone to them. Thus, I was pleasantly surprise…
"...Eton and Oxford, which happens to be where I went" I prefer to be charitable and assume that he wrote this for the purposes of disclosure and to qualify his knowledge of those institutions. I don't think he was drawing a comparison between himself and Ramanujan. Yes - Wolfram has a tendency for self-promotion, and this can be a bit tiresome. But, like others who have commented here, I find the seemingly obligator…
Agree. I read the article from another source, and came to HN expecting that very criticism. Its so tiresome. They didn't even consider that this article by Wolfram took a rare effort to go into lot of Math of Ramanujan. And the core insight of experimental (Ramanujan style) Math vs formal proof oriented (Hardy style) Math and its parallels i.e. the former approach is definitely enabled by Wolfram Mathematica, is very convincing.
And to miss all that, and just harp on self promotion by Wolfram is disingenuous or a very stereotypical comment. And its the top HN comment.
Re: Who Was Ramanujan?
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can barely tolerate anything he writes. It is hard to understand how a person could reach his position without learning how to express himself tastefully. Funny to read this after reading the Claude Shannon profile posted a few hours ago [1]. An actual giant of 20th century mathematics, and so humble. [1] http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/claude-shannon-t...
It is hard to understand, indeed. Wolfram is clearly extremely accomplished by all standards. We all know this . Why in the world does he pump all his written work with insufferable self-promotion? Anyone in a position to make good use of Mathematica has heard of it. I haven't met anyone who doesn't know about WolframAlpha, and I've taught mathematics to high-schoolers. Moreover, it should be obvious to Wolfram that…
"Narcissistic personality disorder" is a real thing, and like any other neurosis is not mutually exclusive with real ability or accomplishment.
Re: Who Was Ramanujan?
#45There are some nice videos on youtube explaining the 1+2+3+...=-1/12 equation. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcKRGpMiVTw
This is the best video on the topic I have seen. Many other ones I have seen often revert to using properties that don't work for ill-behaving series, like rearranging terms.
I just discovered this guy's channel the other day - and now I'm completely addicted! Help!
Re: Who Was Ramanujan?
#46I haven't even begun to read the article and I'm fascinated already. Stephen Wolfram speaking of someone who is not called "Stephen Wolfram". Woooah!
Edit: Finished reading the article, and after blocking out all self-references, I must grudgingly admit I had a good time. This was a nice quick narrative, and I appreciated the insight about the exploratory style of Ramanujam's mathematics (rather than lemma-theorem-corollary style)
Re: Who Was Ramanujan?
#47Mixed feelings about this article: 1. A fine easy read about Ramanujan and Hardy. It was well-summarized and nicely written, with excellent pictures that I had not seen before. 2. A disgusting vein of self-promotion runs throughout the article. Much has been said about Stephan Wolfram's occasionally self-centered behavior, and many of his writings have a self-aggrandizing tone to them. Thus, I was pleasantly surprise…
"...Eton and Oxford, which happens to be where I went" I prefer to be charitable and assume that he wrote this for the purposes of disclosure and to qualify his knowledge of those institutions. I don't think he was drawing a comparison between himself and Ramanujan. Yes - Wolfram has a tendency for self-promotion, and this can be a bit tiresome. But, like others who have commented here, I find the seemingly obligator…
How would you feel if you read the same piece on a microsoft site with constant interjections about how you can do amazing stuff with excel now?
Would you find the comments here 'tiresome' and make a passive aggressive comment about how irritating and uninteresting those commenters are compared to this microsoft guy?
I find the piece really fascinating, but filling an otherwise excellently written article on a really fascinating historical figure with what is blatantly product placement is frustrating, and guess what - people get to comment on it on a comment site. If you find the comments tiring, don't read them.
And note what your comment is doing - you're meta-commenting on tiresomeness, how riveting! Perhaps we can have another meta level and then... they'll be interesting? ;)
Also just to clarify - are you claiming that Wolfram doesn't self-promote? I'd suggest re-reading the piece if you don't agree.
I was thinking the same thing as the top commenter here, and was glad to see that I wasn't the only one who noticed it (I wasn't aware there was a tendency towards disdain - probably justified - for Wolfram here beforehand actually.)
Having said all that, it's a fascinating piece once you filter out that noise!
Re: Who Was Ramanujan?
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
"...Eton and Oxford, which happens to be where I went" I prefer to be charitable and assume that he wrote this for the purposes of disclosure and to qualify his knowledge of those institutions. I don't think he was drawing a comparison between himself and Ramanujan. Yes - Wolfram has a tendency for self-promotion, and this can be a bit tiresome. But, like others who have commented here, I find the seemingly obligator…
Agree. I read the article from another source, and came to HN expecting that very criticism. Its so tiresome. They didn't even consider that this article by Wolfram took a rare effort to go into lot of Math of Ramanujan. And the core insight of experimental (Ramanujan style) Math vs formal proof oriented (Hardy style) Math and its parallels i.e. the former approach is definitely enabled by Wolfram Mathematica, is ver…
So it's not ok to point out blatant product placement in an otherwise great article on a historic figure?
If somebody wrote a piece on Abraham Lincoln, then interjected the piece several times with discussion about their political research website product, you'd remain silent and think to yourself 'oh God HN, focusing on the wrong thing again' if anybody dared comment on it?
And how is it disingenuous? Have you read the piece? It's pretty blatant!
I consider that it took a lot of effort, and find the piece really excellent other than this stuff, but it can't just go uncommented on because some overly sensitive souls can't tolerate dissenting comments.
Personally I find these hipster-ish 'I hate the hate man' type comments disingenuous...
Re: Who Was Ramanujan?
#49Mixed feelings about this article: 1. A fine easy read about Ramanujan and Hardy. It was well-summarized and nicely written, with excellent pictures that I had not seen before. 2. A disgusting vein of self-promotion runs throughout the article. Much has been said about Stephan Wolfram's occasionally self-centered behavior, and many of his writings have a self-aggrandizing tone to them. Thus, I was pleasantly surprise…
The fact that this article was first posted on Wolfram's blog should cut him some slack
Re: Who Was Ramanujan?
#50Nice read. Product placements didn't really bother me. I just skipped them.