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This is your brain on mathematics

anthonybonato.com

21–25 of 25 posts

Re: This is your brain on mathematics

#21

This will probably sound wacky but here's what I think: There are two steps to conveying a thought in a language: 1. recall the grammar rules and vocabulary 2. form the sentence The steps are fundamentally different in that the first one is an exercise in recollection whereas the second one is a "creative" process of some sort. To prove a mathematical fact you go through the same two steps: 1. you recall all the past…

just out of curiosity, how many human languages do you speak fluently?

English, Canadian, Australian and American English.

Re: This is your brain on mathematics

#22
post #15

A pet peeve of mine is when mathematics itself is described as a language, instead of distinguishing mathematics from mathematical language. It's like saying Neuromancer is just a language, that Neuromancer is just English. There is content in mathematics that is independent of the language used to express it. Mathematical notation is also incidental. It is not mathematics itself.

OH, ok, it's not exactly a language. Mathematics is a language generator, and has few other uses (if any).

Re: This is your brain on mathematics

#23
post #14
post #12

Without even looking I guarantee that the Periodic Table of Finite Simple Groups is garbage --- there's no way that the space of finite simple groups have the same structure as the space of atoms.

Yeh, I know, the idea that mathematics could in any way model reality is garbage.

The rows of the periodic table of finite simple groups -- what do they model?

Re: This is your brain on mathematics

#24
post #12

Without even looking I guarantee that the Periodic Table of Finite Simple Groups is garbage --- there's no way that the space of finite simple groups have the same structure as the space of atoms.

A little silly to speak with such overconfidence considering the only similarity is the "table" paradigm. The actual periodic table is poor for its use anyways, and there have been valid criticisms that call for a more abstract grouping, like a spiral/ring table [1] [2] But in any case, the properties of numbers are intrinsic to the relationship between space and time - the ability to store a number physically [in me…

[deleted]

Re: This is your brain on mathematics

#25
post #12

Without even looking I guarantee that the Periodic Table of Finite Simple Groups is garbage --- there's no way that the space of finite simple groups have the same structure as the space of atoms.

Here's Ivan Andrus's (the creator's) explanation of it: https://irandrus.wordpress.com/2012/06/17/the-periodic-table... It's worth taking a look. (Well, I make no guarantees.)

The author admits to twisting the shape of the table to arbitrarily make it look like the table of elements, even though the only similarity is that both have some sense of 2-dimensionality. The groups table is not "periodic" in any sense.

> I also considered the non-classical groups to be “less important” and so there are fewer rows of them to better match the look of the real periodic table. They also have larger orders so it makes sense to include fewer of them on the table. > Since there are no “sporadic” elements, I had to decide what to do with the sporadic simple groups. These are groups that don’t fall into any of the other families. At one point I put them in the upper right corner with a jagged boundary like the non-metals. This made the table resemble the real periodic table, but it had more rows and less columns so it looked rather “thick”. Unfortunately, it didn’t make as much sense from an algebraic point of view, so I placed them where the lanthanides and actinides are found instead. This is slightly misleading, because if enough new elements were to be discovered there would be another row in that section. But you can’t have everything perfect. After all, there are an infinite number of simple groups, and only a finite number of elements.

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