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Who Was Ramanujan?

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Re: Who Was Ramanujan?

#51

Post by wglb »

johnloeber wrote: post #21
neipfjin239 wrote: post #17

The (sadly all too predictable) comments about Wolfram's self-promotion and product placement give me an idea. Someone should create a blog called "Wolfram minus Wolfram" (in the vein of the excellent "Garfield minus Garfield") which exists solely to republish Wolfram's (often very interesting) writings, minus the references to his own products and his own past achievements. I think it would be popular.

Republishing? I suspect you would immediately find yourself in boiling water with Wolfram's lawyers. See this nice story: http://bactra.org/reviews/wolfram/

Subtitled A Rare Blend of Monster Raving Egomania and Utter Batshit Insanity

Re: Who Was Ramanujan?

#52

Post by lispython »

Last year, I had a talk with Stephen Wolfram, he said that, for him, the most important secret helping him solve problems is "some version of confidence or arrogant". That make him never fear any difficulty, but this arrogant inevitably behave in some other aspects of his life, and affect people's impression of him.

Then, his writing style never bother me again.

Re: Who Was Ramanujan?

#53

Post by oneloop »

johnloeber wrote: post #6

Mixed 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…

Look up "content marketing"

Re: Who Was Ramanujan?

#55

Post by hellofunk »

Plain and simple, Ramanujan was the Mozart of mathematics. Seemingly god-like insight into numbers that even he could not completely explain. There are excellent anecdotes about his life in the book Music of the Primes.

Re: Who Was Ramanujan?

#56

Post by andyjohnson0 »

lolo_ wrote: post #47
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #29

Earlier 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…

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…

I agree that Wolfram has a tendency for self promotion, and didn't claim otherwise. When people on HN constantly point this out and assume negative intent, every time something he has written is submitted, the result is tiresome noise. But having read both of your extensive comments, I get it that you feel strongly about this: that comes across very clearly.

Edit: second sentence for clarity.

Re: Who Was Ramanujan?

#57

Post by willvarfar »

lolo_ wrote: post #48
aws_ls wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If a well-known politician wrote a piece on Abraham Lincoln, then interjected the piece several times with discussion about their political opinions, I'd say that was fair for an article by the politician about another politician.

Re: Who Was Ramanujan?

#58

Post by lolo_ »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #56
lolo_ wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree that Wolfram has a tendency for self promotion, and didn't claim otherwise. When people on HN constantly point this out and assume negative intent, every time something he has written is submitted, the result is tiresome noise. But having read both of your extensive comments, I get it that you feel strongly about this: that comes across very clearly. Edit: second sentence for clarity.

Tip for these kind of discussions - don't get personal unless it's relevant - my feelings on this (which you misinterpret actually) are irrelevant, and this just sounds like a bit of an underhand dig whether you intended it as such or not.

In actuality I am not really that bothered about Wolfram at all haha, I just disagreed with what _you_ said :)

Back to the discussion, I am glad you agree on the self-promotion aspect. Personally I don't ascribe negative intent, but I do think it's worth pointing out this stuff when you see it, so still fundamentally disagree with what you said.

Also, I tend to write a lot in every comment, so length of comment != importance to me, rather consider me overly verbose...

EDIT: Downvoted for criticising an ad hominem - ah HN, don't you ever change, you cute, cute little dandelion!

Re: Who Was Ramanujan?

#59

Post by lolo_ »

willvarfar wrote: post #57
lolo_ wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If a well-known politician wrote a piece on Abraham Lincoln, then interjected the piece several times with discussion about their political opinions, I'd say that was fair for an article by the politician about another politician.

And? This bears no relevance to the point I made.

What I said was:

'...then interjected the piece several times with discussion about their political research website product'

If you're making the comparison in that Wolfram is a mathematician giving his opinion on Ramanujan, a historical mathematician, well you're missing my point entirely - in fact if you read my comments here you'll see that I find the article really excellent in those parts where he refrains from his advertising.

My issue is with comments like:

"Today with Mathematica and the Wolfram Language we have immensely more powerful tools with which to do experiments and make discoveries in mathematics (not to mention the computational universe in general)."

Well, today with 'modern software' would do don't you think? If it was once or twice it'd be forgiveable, but there are several paragraphs like this throughout the article.

Yes, I realise it was first posted on the wolfram blog, but I think it would have been a little more respectful had Wolfram restrained himself at least a bit in this regard, it's incredibly jarring when you're talking on a historical subject.

Re: Who Was Ramanujan?

#60

Post by [deleted] »

lolo_ wrote: post #58
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that Wolfram has a tendency for self promotion, and didn't claim otherwise. When people on HN constantly point this out and assume negative intent, every time something he has written is submitted, the result is tiresome noise. But having read both of your extensive comments, I get it that you feel strongly about this: that comes across very clearly. Edit: second sentence for clarity.

Tip for these kind of discussions - don't get personal unless it's relevant - my feelings on this (which you misinterpret actually) are irrelevant, and this just sounds like a bit of an underhand dig whether you intended it as such or not. In actuality I am not really that bothered about Wolfram at all haha, I just disagreed with what _you_ said :) Back to the discussion, I am glad you agree on the self-promotion asp…

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