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Simple Set Game Proof Stuns Mathematicians

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Re: Simple Set Game Proof Stuns Mathematicians

#81

Post by Natanael_L »

kragen wrote: post #80
btilly wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, he picked a famous and perfect example. He just didn't specify it well enough. Over the last 2 centuries, number theorists developed the theory of large prime numbers. The numbers that they were dealing with were so large that they had no conceivable use in describing the physical universe. Famously one prominent number theorist, G. H. Hardy, wrote A Mathematician's Apology , a book describing and justifying his…

Please don't blame me for refuting what he did say, instead of what he would have said if he'd known what he was talking about.

I meant exactly what he mentioned. How was I supposed to know you were going to bring up a far older example which I hadn't heard of?

Re: Simple Set Game Proof Stuns Mathematicians

#82

Post by btilly »

kragen wrote: post #80
btilly wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, he picked a famous and perfect example. He just didn't specify it well enough. Over the last 2 centuries, number theorists developed the theory of large prime numbers. The numbers that they were dealing with were so large that they had no conceivable use in describing the physical universe. Famously one prominent number theorist, G. H. Hardy, wrote A Mathematician's Apology , a book describing and justifying his…

Please don't blame me for refuting what he did say, instead of what he would have said if he'd known what he was talking about.

From my point of view, both of you demonstrated a lop-sided knowledge of math history.

Clearly you know more about the ancient history and origins. I'd be willing to bet that you know that the ancient Greeks knew 2500 years ago what prime numbers were, had proved that there were an infinite number of them, had algorithms like the Euclidean algorithm for finding the greatest common denominator, had proven unique factorization AND had demonstrated that sqrt(2) was not a fraction. We don't actually know how much farther a lot of the knowledge goes.

On the other side he had obviously encountered cryptography, and knew that a whole lot of the necessary number theory dates back to Gauss, 200 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disquisitiones_Arithmeticae is the origin of concepts like modular arithmetic, quadratic residues, and so on. But he was not familiar with the ancient history predating that, or else he could not have thought that the study of primes only goes back 200 years!

He could have avoided the problem on his side by Googling for what he was going to say before saying things with glaring and obvious errors. Very few of us are so careful.

You could have avoided the problem on your side by giving him the benefit of the doubt and assuming that he's probably not a complete idiot, then trying to figure out what he might have meant. You might or might not have figured out "cryptography", but you could have at least made your post in the form of a much more pleasant question. However that is fairly rare to find, and doubly so online.

As for me, I'm just lucky enough to know both halves of the history, so could easily sort it out.

Re: Simple Set Game Proof Stuns Mathematicians

#83

Post by kragen »

btilly wrote: post #82
kragen wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't blame me for refuting what he did say, instead of what he would have said if he'd known what he was talking about.

From my point of view, both of you demonstrated a lop-sided knowledge of math history. Clearly you know more about the ancient history and origins. I'd be willing to bet that you know that the ancient Greeks knew 2500 years ago what prime numbers were, had proved that there were an infinite number of them, had algorithms like the Euclidean algorithm for finding the greatest common denominator, had proven unique facto…

Ben, I'd've thought you'd known me long enough to know that I'm familiar with RSA and the history of number theory. (Maybe I misremember; you seem to have started doing Perl after I left clpm.) I read A Mathematician's Apology last year (most of it, anyway), and my friend Nadia keeps publishing papers that factor large numbers of RSA keys in practice, the latest being CacheBleed. Your understanding of cryptography is surely deeper than mine — the most I've ever done myself is write an implementation of SRP — but it's not as if I haven't heard of the field.

I had thought that it was common knowledge that (small) prime numbers had a lot of practical uses (mental arithmetic in general, arithmetic with fractions, including with vulgar fractions, gear train design, that kind of thing) but apparently I was wrong. It turns out that lots of people don't know about this. So my inference, that only a complete idiot would not know this, he did not know this, and therefore he was a complete idiot, was ill-founded.

And so I came out looking like some kind of ignorant, arrogant know-it-all. I really appreciate the feedback, Ben. Natanael_L, I'm sorry I was such a dick to you.

Re: Simple Set Game Proof Stuns Mathematicians

#84

Post by cwmoo740 »

natdempk wrote: post #46
cwmoo740 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My family is ultra-competitive and this used to be one of our go to games until my sister mastered it. My brother-in-law wrote an android game to help her practice and after about a month she was down to sub 1 minute clears. We had to give up the game after that.

Is the android app available for download anywhere?

He got a cease and desist from the manufacturer so he took it down unfortunately.

Re: Simple Set Game Proof Stuns Mathematicians

#85

Post by PeterisP »

tamana wrote: post #61
Nadya wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to lose friends and be disowned from your family - learn to play Monopoly by the actual rules and follow this strategy: http://imgur.com/a/vX3zm I can confirm that it works and nobody wants to play Monopoly anymore. Instead we play more fun board games

This strategy works when one person plays by the complicated rules and everyone else plays for fun. When you go pull out some BGG game, you'll have the same problem: the board game geek rules lawyer playing strategy and trouncing players who play for fun.

Monopoly is a particular case where it's important to play with the actual rules if you play for fun - the common deviations from the rules make the game much, much more drawn out than intended, beyond the point where everything is already decided but you get to slowly slog it out through the motions and it becomes boring. "As intended", monopoly has a rather rapid endgame after the (arguably more fun) initial and middle part.

Re: Simple Set Game Proof Stuns Mathematicians

#86

Post by btilly »

kragen wrote: post #83
btilly wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my point of view, both of you demonstrated a lop-sided knowledge of math history. Clearly you know more about the ancient history and origins. I'd be willing to bet that you know that the ancient Greeks knew 2500 years ago what prime numbers were, had proved that there were an infinite number of them, had algorithms like the Euclidean algorithm for finding the greatest common denominator, had proven unique facto…

Ben, I'd've thought you'd known me long enough to know that I'm familiar with RSA and the history of number theory. (Maybe I misremember; you seem to have started doing Perl after I left clpm.) I read A Mathematician's Apology last year (most of it, anyway), and my friend Nadia keeps publishing papers that factor large numbers of RSA keys in practice, the latest being CacheBleed. Your understanding of cryptography is…

I am familiar with your name, but hadn't tracked you well enough to remember anything more than, "He knows Perl." I left Usenet about a year before I learned Perl, so I was never in clpm.

So you just failed to register the cryptography reference and then backsolve to what he really meant. If that's the worst thing that you did last month, then you're a better person than I...

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