11–20 of 51 posts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanche_Descartes
The pseudonym originated by combining the initials of the mathematicians' given names (Bill, Leonard, Arthur, and Cedric) to form BLAC. This was extended to BLAnChe. The surname Descartes was chosen as a play on the common phrase carte blanche.
V.I. Arnol'd does a better job of elucidating on this idea than I ever could in his "On Teaching Mathematics": https://www.uni-muenster.de/Physik.TP/~munsteg/arnold.html
I'm inclined to regard talk of judgement of who is a "great mathematician", who is the "greatest mathematician" and so on as mathematical criticism. And I'm inclined to regard mathematical critics in the same way G. H. Hardy did, as he explained in A Mathematician's Apology [1]. To put the matter more bluntly: if the pilots of Top Gun were in the business of criticism, there wouldn't be any left because they'd blow e…
Edit (clarification):
I mean, by conflating multiple people's work as one (by whatever criteria, in this case a common pseudonym), comparison becomes meaningless.
I feel like Bourbaki set back teaching mathematics a great deal, by focusing too much on the abstraction rather than the concepts and intuition behind it. V.I. Arnol'd does a better job of elucidating on this idea than I ever could in his "On Teaching Mathematics": https://www.uni-muenster.de/Physik.TP/~munsteg/arnold.html
The name was recently referenced by a satellite of another pseudonymous group, Wu-Ming (previously "Luther Blissett"). Under the name "Nicoletta Bourbaki" * , they published a number of very detailed analysis of historic revisionism and disinformation efforts, focusing particularly on material peddled by right-wing activists from the Italian North-East border. Bunch of links, in Italian: Published on Wu-Ming's own bl…
...Except, perhaps, for Satoshi Nakamoto.
It's either that, or he's Nick Szabo.
I feel like Bourbaki set back teaching mathematics a great deal, by focusing too much on the abstraction rather than the concepts and intuition behind it. V.I. Arnol'd does a better job of elucidating on this idea than I ever could in his "On Teaching Mathematics": https://www.uni-muenster.de/Physik.TP/~munsteg/arnold.html
[0] EDIT: I am wrong about this historical fact, although I believe it doesn't change my point about modern usage. Wikipedia says: > While teaching at the University of Strasbourg, Henri Cartan complained to his colleague André Weil of the inadequacy of available course material, which prompted Weil to propose a meeting with others in Paris to collectively write a modern analysis textbook. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Bourbaki).
She talks about how the groups work together for a time doing great things, and then, and perhaps more importantly, the members of the group go on to do amazing things on their own or even start "invisible colleges" of their own.
Talk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oeigCANJVQ&list=PLE7tQUdRKc...
Slides:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/zcgmrmz35jthvv3/Camerata-rubyconf....