21–30 of 96 posts
https://arxiv.org/search/math?searchtype=author&query=Sah%2C...
I'd say 75% chance he'd be thrown an obscure curveball and be completely written off by the hiring company.
This sort of news is always like a splash of cold water to the face to me. I haven't produced any breakthrough research as an undergraduate. Have I accomplished enough? Am I too complacent? Should I be doing more, working more, studying more? I always remember that the best way to achievement is to stick to areas that are personally exciting to me, and keep cranking at the best pace I can. Others' success shouldn't m…
If you have a roof over your head and food on the table you are doing enough. Anything beyond that is either for your enjoyment or to feed your ego.
I also want to point out that that sort of thinking also is what traps people in abusive households etc..
If anyone is reading this and all you have is a roof over your head and food on the table, that doesn't mean you have to be happy like that.
(Sorry if I'm overstepping).
Great work! I wonder if their expertise would be helpful in understanding deep learning, a rare field that made advances before mathematicians had fully laid the groundwork (sometimes they do a century ahead of time :)); https://deepmath-conference.com/
I just don’t get why comments like this are downvoted. But I do suspect this makes Hacker News what it is. Good at surfacing a certain x to y percentile of a certain way of looking at things. It’s not a place to brainstorm or be open minded about new ways of thinking successfully - not very very often. More a place to surface small useful bits of information that people find (a) useful and (b) that people are passion…
'I wonder if' is not the problem here, it is that it isn't even wrong on so many levels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong
Great work! I wonder if their expertise would be helpful in understanding deep learning, a rare field that made advances before mathematicians had fully laid the groundwork (sometimes they do a century ahead of time :)); https://deepmath-conference.com/
I just don’t get why comments like this are downvoted. But I do suspect this makes Hacker News what it is. Good at surfacing a certain x to y percentile of a certain way of looking at things. It’s not a place to brainstorm or be open minded about new ways of thinking successfully - not very very often. More a place to surface small useful bits of information that people find (a) useful and (b) that people are passion…
It is certainly not a “new way of thinking”. First of all, there is hardly any thought here. Secondly, “understanding deep learning mathematically” is a well known problem to mathematicians.
It is a comment that could have been generated by an (old, 2000s era) AI.
While I recognize that we (broadly) like to idolize particularly effective individuals, I feel we risk essentially dishonouring the dynamic when we focus so intently and exclusively on just one member of this kind of deeply collaborative union.
Wonder how he'd hold up in a modern programming interview. I'd say 75% chance he'd be thrown an obscure curveball and be completely written off by the hiring company.
I was having a discussion recently in another forum where I argued that success at a Math Olympiad is a good indicator of future success. I'm not surprised to see in the slightest he won a gold medal at 16.
That doesn’t seem like a hot take to me. Success at a Math Olympiad (at the international level) is almost certainly a good indicator because you have to be an outlier in both talent and willingness to grind in order to get that far, and that level of achievement is the type of success that snowballs because people respect the achievement.
This sort of news is always like a splash of cold water to the face to me. I haven't produced any breakthrough research as an undergraduate. Have I accomplished enough? Am I too complacent? Should I be doing more, working more, studying more? I always remember that the best way to achievement is to stick to areas that are personally exciting to me, and keep cranking at the best pace I can. Others' success shouldn't m…
- You need to have your own psychology in order. A lot of people have things going on in their lives that make it impossible to concentrate on this sort of thing.
- You need to be close enough, background wise. No prereqs -> can't learn this subject.
- You need to be aware of where the low hanging fruit is. This might be some random comment by a lecturer or a line in a paper that makes you investigate something.
- You need access to resources. Anything from a sparring partner to a hadron collider might be needed.
- Timing. Bunch of stuff coming together, might happen 10 years before you or 10 years after.
So there's reasons why undergrads don't always come up with groundbreaking things. Not to worry. You can still try to understand stuff after someone else has found it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That doesn’t seem like a hot take to me. Success at a Math Olympiad (at the international level) is almost certainly a good indicator because you have to be an outlier in both talent and willingness to grind in order to get that far, and that level of achievement is the type of success that snowballs because people respect the achievement.
You'd think it would be a hot take but I had someone arguing against me that it's not a good indicator since only approx 20% of competitors get a PhD in Math. I felt that he was emotionally invested in his argument, likely due to wanting to do a math PhD and not being food at the competitions. I even agreed that you don't need to be good at competitions to get a PhD but he still kept to his argument that being good d…
I agree with the answer above. You need to pour a fair bit of effort into getting on an Olympiad team. Whether you get a PhD is more a question of economics, IMO. If you're showing that much promise there will be many other temptations, and bear in mind it's not just rich countries that have math kids, there's plenty of olympiad kids who need to get out and make money when they've done their degrees.
The kind of work you do in a PhD is also quite different. A math contest is a few questions with definite answers and a time limit.