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The Mind of a Mathematician

paw.princeton.edu

11–20 of 68 posts

Re: The Mind of a Mathematician

#11

I would argue that Terrence Tao is overrated. He has solved tons of problems in mathematics, but none groundbreaking.

They're not groundbreaking to you because they don't fit the mold of popular science which requires something to be cool and easily digestible in order for most to consider it ground breaking.

Re: The Mind of a Mathematician

#12

I would argue that Terrence Tao is overrated. He has solved tons of problems in mathematics, but none groundbreaking.

Can you define groundbreaking? In a proper historical context, one might say the same about the likes of Newton, Euler etc. Mathematical ideas don't just happen out of nowhere. Everyone is inspired by something that was done before. So truly groundbreaking things are mostly a myth. The closest it gets is when someone takes ideas from one field and unexpectedly applied it to solve ab important problem in another field. Like Poincare's work on three body problem and celestial mechanics.

Re: The Mind of a Mathematician

#13

I would argue that Terrence Tao is overrated. He has solved tons of problems in mathematics, but none groundbreaking.

He received the Fields in 2006 due in no small part to the paper “The primes contain arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions”. I would call that work groundbreaking.

Re: The Mind of a Mathematician

#15

I would argue that Terrence Tao is overrated. He has solved tons of problems in mathematics, but none groundbreaking.

Define ‘overrated.’ He did get awarded a prestigious prize, didn’t he? (On the other hand, there may be little that’s left to be discovered in mathematics which one could call groundbreaking and which the human mind could comprehend without a life-time effort...)

Re: The Mind of a Mathematician

#16

I would argue that Terrence Tao is overrated. He has solved tons of problems in mathematics, but none groundbreaking.

Overrated or not, I’d give my right arm to have Terry Tao’s brain.

Cheapskate. How about getting Hawking’s body or Galois’ short life.

Re: The Mind of a Mathematician

#17
What strikes me the most is the amount of support he received and the people he was able to meet when he was a child. I don't want to dismiss his talent, but this level of support is NOT available to 99%+ of population. His parents have done a wonderful job.

To recall my days as an undergraduate at a well-known UK university studying mathematics - large classes (300+) where everyone is disposable, nothing to do but sleep on the table when you work through the problems quickly at a workshop, no interesting projects or opportunities to latch on to develop yourself, nothing to do for days but party, waste talent and occasionally read a math book to catch up. Essentially you are hammered to be average until maybe you enter a PhD course. At that point it is too late.

Re: The Mind of a Mathematician

#18
I very much like that people like Tao are famous. It’s relatively good for the intellectual spirit and hopefully it inspires others.

However this fixation with his “extraordinary capacity”, scores, medals and accolades; I wish we could skip it.

Let’s talk about the awesome work and why it’s awesome. Let’s play through some of it: I’m relatively sure most people know nothing more about Tao than “he’s a genius”. What’s the point of that?

I think we’d be better off if we took the time to understand great work and let our appreciation of great people live through that.

Re: The Mind of a Mathematician

#20

I would argue that Terrence Tao is overrated. He has solved tons of problems in mathematics, but none groundbreaking.

This seems like a thoroughly detestable use of HN: a gratuitous, mean, and almost certainly uninformed (you spelled his name incorrectly) judgement of another human being as "overrated" or "underrated". Why not use your time to do something worthwhile?
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