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Who Was Ramanujan?

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Re: Who Was Ramanujan?

#121

Post by dang »

hgwells wrote: post #118
dang wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, and it's time for HN to let go of it. Think of it as a test for this community: can we focus on what's interesting in what the man says and resist being trolled by the rest. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=wolfram%20derangement%20syndro...

It isn't that simple: yesterday, after seeing your comment I carefully read Wolfram's article from beginning to end. I enjoyed it while trying to skip the ads. Today, when I was thinking about Ramanujan, he was inextricably linked to Wolfram/Mathematica. This sort of thing is sinister and it's exactly the reason why people are getting worked up about it.

That's a fair point but I think it might be too subtle for this level of discussion. If we ever get HN to the place where we can work on refining discourse to that level, I'll be delighted, but it seems to me a long-term goal.

Re: Who Was Ramanujan?

#122

Post by camperman »

goldenkey wrote: post #66
camperman wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just discovered this guy's channel the other day - and now I'm completely addicted! Help!

Me too! Ive started learning math. It seems like math is taught as number crunching but is really the philosophy and study of computation and operations on objects. Higher level math seems fundamental to CS and all the other sciences. Im now on my journey to understand the syntax and basic ideas. Wikipedia is great. And this video series is amazing: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CMWFmjlB8v0

Thank you kindly - subscribed.

Re: Who Was Ramanujan?

#123

Post by bpchaps »

leblancfg wrote: post #119
bpchaps wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote this up last night but decided not to post it, but why not, since it's topical now. He might've learned from the criticism last time. sed 's/[^a-zA-Z]/ /' rama.txt | tr ' ' '\n' | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | egrep "^(mine|his|me|i|him|he)$"| sort | uniq -c | sort -n 11 me 15 him 82 i 107 his 148 he sed 's/[^a-zA-Z]/ /' minsk.txt | tr ' ' '\n' | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | egrep "^(mine|his|me|i|him|he)$"| s…

Well, Wolfram also spent time with Minsky, so he'd have stories to recount, but not with Ramanujan. That alone would explain the numbers. I find the Ramanujan story actually reads more like a Mathematica advert, whereas the other more like a very self-involved eulogy.

Nah, I agree. I was mostly being facetious :)

Re: Who Was Ramanujan?

#124

Post by bboreham »

eggy wrote: post #86
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…

Yes I read it at first, and enjoyed the article in full before seeing these comments too. Reading through some of the points in the negative, I am not sure I get it. He remarks he went to a school mentioned in the article. So? And he uses Mathematica in the article to highlight some math points. Does anyone expect him to ignore the software and company he founded, and do manual calcs, or better yet, use an iPython no…

> He remarks he went to a school mentioned in the article.

There is only one mention of Eton in the piece; the statement that Wolfram went there.

Re: Who Was Ramanujan?

#125

Post by taneq »

dang wrote: post #117
dimino wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a meta-syndrome, wherein all submissions of Stephen Wolfram content end up discussing how unfortunate it is we're all preoccupied discussing his self promotion?

That's a secondary infection.

Maybe more like an autoimmune / allergic response?

Re: Who Was Ramanujan?

#126

Post by murukesh_s »

willvarfar wrote: post #18

A very nice article. Personally I'm not bothered by the "self-promotion" others perceive in Wolfram's posts. The criticism in the comments here are all very repetitive and tiresome. I presume many read anything written by Wolfram with the hope of finding something they can point out as self-promotion ;)

It is completely OK for him to do self-promotion (it might not have been deliberately). But it would have been far far better if hand't mentioned mathematica or himself. The article then would have been gold

Re: Who Was Ramanujan?

#127

Post by BasDirks »

dsfuoi wrote: post #35
BasDirks wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should not put any links to a damn search engine in such texts. If people want to Google "Sanskrit", I'm sure they will manage.

So according to your logic, link to this article should be removed and anyone wanting to find it should manage . I also find it delightfully ironic that you used the term to Google "Sanskrit" . and not to WolframAlpha "Sanskrit" . Hypocrisy is oozing out of your comment.

I was not very careful in phrasing my previous comment.

I was thinking of a situation where a Google employee puts links in the actual copy of an article not primarily about search engines. I find it more permissible in the case of WolframAlpha, because it calls itself a knowledge engine, and provides carefully curated content. Google is a more generic beast, and I just don't think it makes sense to litter a text with hyperlinks. If I see a link, I will presume that the author wants me to click it and read it. If it is very general "further reading", I prefer having these presented after the main material. A lot of preferences and assumptions on my part.

My gripe with OP is how it integrates the product into the text. I like hyperlinks, but I prefer separation of copy and generic resources.

Re: Who Was Ramanujan?

#128

Post by cbd1984 »

dang wrote: post #80
willvarfar wrote: post #18

A very nice article. Personally I'm not bothered by the "self-promotion" others perceive in Wolfram's posts. The criticism in the comments here are all very repetitive and tiresome. I presume many read anything written by Wolfram with the hope of finding something they can point out as self-promotion ;)

Correct, and it's time for HN to let go of it. Think of it as a test for this community: can we focus on what's interesting in what the man says and resist being trolled by the rest. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=wolfram%20derangement%20syndro...

Too bad it's advertising for a company that uses slave labor.

Re: Who Was Ramanujan?

#129

Post by cbd1984 »

willvarfar wrote: post #18

A very nice article. Personally I'm not bothered by the "self-promotion" others perceive in Wolfram's posts. The criticism in the comments here are all very repetitive and tiresome. I presume many read anything written by Wolfram with the hope of finding something they can point out as self-promotion ;)

It's too bad they rely on slave labor.

Re: Who Was Ramanujan?

#130

Post by cbd1984 »

tomsmeding wrote: post #101
cbd1984 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So accepting blatant advertising is a test for the community? And blatantly incorrect spam at that. Oh, and calling it a derangement syndrome is both denigrating to those of us with real mental problems and a cheap way to duck the charges of spamming.

You can also not read it, if you don't want to.

I don't want to what a slave-labor-using company has to say to be featured here.
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