Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

‘Outsiders’ Crack 50-Year-Old Math Problem (2015)

quantamagazine.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 29 posts

Re: ‘Outsiders’ Crack 50-Year-Old Math Problem (2015)

#11

Post by crankylinuxuser »

waynecochran wrote: post #9
Invictus0 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a real phenomenon by the name of credential creep: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credentialism_and_educational_...

This is the opposite of credential creep ... the mathematicians with the credentials were really open minded and excited that someone from the "outside" had a solution! They didn't give a rip about the math pedigree.

That's because CompSci and mathematics is definite. It doesn't matter if someone has PhD's up the wazoo, or didn't finish high school. If the theorem solves something, and it has a proof that shows it, it's accepted.

Other sciences are much more "soft" and have error bars and such. Someone with a "lesser pedigree" just couldn't cope with the special sciences. Nor could they afford the lab.

Re: ‘Outsiders’ Crack 50-Year-Old Math Problem (2015)

#12

Post by A_Person »

ericand wrote: post #2

"He guessed that the problem might take him a few weeks. Instead, it took him five years" Perhaps the key to their success was typically programming work estimations ;) More seriously, I think that if you think something is easy for you, or that you are almost there, you may be more willing to put in the necessary time, than if you knew it would take 5 years from the outset. "Spielman realized that he himself might b…

> "He guessed that the problem might take him a few weeks. Instead, it took him five years"

>> Perhaps the key to their success was typically programming work estimations ;)

No, you should always normalize programmer estimates by increasing both the unit and the measure by one. So "a few weeks", say 4 weeks, will actually take: 5 months! So he still took 12 times longer than the properly normalized estimate! :-)

Re: ‘Outsiders’ Crack 50-Year-Old Math Problem (2015)

#13

Post by graycat »

bllguo wrote: post #4

Great story that reminds me of something I've had. There's just so much knowledge out there - and growing - that researchers have to be increasingly specialized. Isn't it inevitable that 4 years of undergrad + 1-2 yrs of grad school classes won't prepare you sufficiently to do novel research? Imagine when people have to be in school for something like 10 years before they know enough to do "real" work! And people wil…

One help: As in the OP, do field crossing.

Another help: Start with a problem significant in practice. If get a solution with new, correct results, then can say that the results are significant because the practical problem was.

Re: ‘Outsiders’ Crack 50-Year-Old Math Problem (2015)

#14

Post by jfoutz »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #8
Invictus0 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a real phenomenon by the name of credential creep: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credentialism_and_educational_...

It has very little to do with credential creep. The problem is that, in order to do work at the frontier of a field, you first have to get to the frontier - you have to learn what's going on there, which means that you have to learn all the stuff you have to learn in order to actually understand what's going on there. The learning to actually understand enough to get to the frontier is taking longer and longer. That'…

That sounds like an abstraction problem. I’m totally willing to accept I’m crazy. But my gut feeling is there is a lot of technical debt in representation, so it’s hard to move to the frontier.

Re: ‘Outsiders’ Crack 50-Year-Old Math Problem (2015)

#15

Post by opportune »

majos wrote: post #7
bllguo wrote: post #4

Great story that reminds me of something I've had. There's just so much knowledge out there - and growing - that researchers have to be increasingly specialized. Isn't it inevitable that 4 years of undergrad + 1-2 yrs of grad school classes won't prepare you sufficiently to do novel research? Imagine when people have to be in school for something like 10 years before they know enough to do "real" work! And people wil…

I think, like many things, this varies a lot by field. In computer science, which is still comparatively "new", it is not that uncommon (at top 5 schools, it may even be common) for grad students to publish real research in good venues in their first or second year of grad school (what is nominally coursework time). Even in areas like theory where you're not really hacking away at experiments or building stuff. Contr…

This could again be a consequence of the amount of knowledge out there in both fields. Math is a very mature field compared to CS, though of course CS inherits some of that maturity due to how closely related the two are. First year grad students are publishing CS research because there's still a lot of "low hanging fruit" out there. Lots of open problems have the right lack of popularity, ease of solving, and importance (coupled with the fact that IME many CS grad students actually aren't that good at higher proof-based math) for this to be occurring. Over time the portion of problems that are easy to solve and important will decrease, and I bet theoretical CS's research landscape will look more like CS.

Re: ‘Outsiders’ Crack 50-Year-Old Math Problem (2015)

#16

Post by Izkata »

A_Person wrote: post #12
ericand wrote: post #2

"He guessed that the problem might take him a few weeks. Instead, it took him five years" Perhaps the key to their success was typically programming work estimations ;) More seriously, I think that if you think something is easy for you, or that you are almost there, you may be more willing to put in the necessary time, than if you knew it would take 5 years from the outset. "Spielman realized that he himself might b…

> "He guessed that the problem might take him a few weeks. Instead, it took him five years" >> Perhaps the key to their success was typically programming work estimations ;) No, you should always normalize programmer estimates by increasing both the unit and the measure by one. So "a few weeks", say 4 weeks, will actually take: 5 months! So he still took 12 times longer than the properly normalized estimate! :-)

Y'know, if you take "a few" to mean 3 instead of 4, then do that same transformation twice, it lands right on 5 years...

Re: ‘Outsiders’ Crack 50-Year-Old Math Problem (2015)

#17

Post by A_Person »

Izkata wrote: post #16
A_Person wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "He guessed that the problem might take him a few weeks. Instead, it took him five years" >> Perhaps the key to their success was typically programming work estimations ;) No, you should always normalize programmer estimates by increasing both the unit and the measure by one. So "a few weeks", say 4 weeks, will actually take: 5 months! So he still took 12 times longer than the properly normalized estimate! :-)

Y'know, if you take "a few" to mean 3 instead of 4, then do that same transformation twice, it lands right on 5 years...

Yes, great catch! Perhaps Tom said "3 weeks" to Dick, Dick said "4 months" to Harry, and Harry said "5 years" to Jane! :-)

Re: ‘Outsiders’ Crack 50-Year-Old Math Problem (2015)

#18

Post by ggggtez »

jfoutz wrote: post #14
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has very little to do with credential creep. The problem is that, in order to do work at the frontier of a field, you first have to get to the frontier - you have to learn what's going on there, which means that you have to learn all the stuff you have to learn in order to actually understand what's going on there. The learning to actually understand enough to get to the frontier is taking longer and longer. That'…

That sounds like an abstraction problem. I’m totally willing to accept I’m crazy. But my gut feeling is there is a lot of technical debt in representation, so it’s hard to move to the frontier.

In this case, you're probably just wrong. Consider for half a second how many programmers fail Fizz Buzz, and then think about how much work it takes to get from that to the frontier of computational science (i.e. not just installing another javascript library, but actually computation).

There's a lot of low hanging fruit out there, but you still have to actually know how to find it.

Re: ‘Outsiders’ Crack 50-Year-Old Math Problem (2015)

#19

Post by Smaug123 »

bllguo wrote: post #4

Great story that reminds me of something I've had. There's just so much knowledge out there - and growing - that researchers have to be increasingly specialized. Isn't it inevitable that 4 years of undergrad + 1-2 yrs of grad school classes won't prepare you sufficiently to do novel research? Imagine when people have to be in school for something like 10 years before they know enough to do "real" work! And people wil…

Related Slate Star Codex story: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/11/09/ars-longa-vita-brevis/

Re: ‘Outsiders’ Crack 50-Year-Old Math Problem (2015)

#20

Post by AstralStorm »

ggggtez wrote: post #18
jfoutz wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like an abstraction problem. I’m totally willing to accept I’m crazy. But my gut feeling is there is a lot of technical debt in representation, so it’s hard to move to the frontier.

In this case, you're probably just wrong. Consider for half a second how many programmers fail Fizz Buzz, and then think about how much work it takes to get from that to the frontier of computational science (i.e. not just installing another javascript library, but actually computation). There's a lot of low hanging fruit out there, but you still have to actually know how to find it.

Regardless, will written undifferentiated paper is way better than a paper mill and badly written or worse, lying paper. These happen all the time in algorithms.

Cannot even rely on citation indeed as it is a common practice to cite papers from your surroundings without quality control. Or barely on topic.

Post reply on HN