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Mathematician Solves Sensitivity Conjecture in Two Pages (2019)

quantamagazine.org

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Re: Mathematician Solves Sensitivity Conjecture in Two Pages (2019)

#61

Post by [deleted] »

ahmedalsudani wrote: post #46
TheRealPomax wrote: post #35

When of course, in reality rather than clickbaity titles, they only wrote up the final, concise proof using two pages _after_ thinking about, and working on, the problem for seven years, building on decades of specific research combined with seven years of learning new mathematics (new to Huang, not necessarily new to the world) that might offer ways into cracking this problem.

Nothing clickbaity about the title. It says two pages without describing how much effort went into those two pages. Two pages does not imply it's easy. It implies it's elegant, which probably requires a fair amount of effort.

[deleted]

Re: Mathematician Solves Sensitivity Conjecture in Two Pages (2019)

#62

Post by enjoyyourlife »

wenc wrote: post #16

I remember this article from 2019. I remember the writing style struck me then as being a little strange. My first thought was "who's the mathematician"? But the article doesn't actually mention the author's name until a few paragraphs down, electing instead to put the spotlight on Scott Aaronson and other commentators. I felt then as I do now that it was a little lacking in respect.

The name of the mathematician is Hao Huang

Re: Mathematician Solves Sensitivity Conjecture in Two Pages (2019)

#63

Post by pundesigner »

wenc wrote: post #16

I remember this article from 2019. I remember the writing style struck me then as being a little strange. My first thought was "who's the mathematician"? But the article doesn't actually mention the author's name until a few paragraphs down, electing instead to put the spotlight on Scott Aaronson and other commentators. I felt then as I do now that it was a little lacking in respect.

Had a similar experience with another (also Quanta?) article last year about some optical physics breakthrough made at my not-very-well-known alma mater, but the article was written as if the work was all done at MIT, which one of the collaborators was affiliated with. You had to scroll to the second page to see the name of the institution that the PI was actually at.

Re: Mathematician Solves Sensitivity Conjecture in Two Pages (2019)

#65

Post by xmprt »

bidirectional wrote: post #57
ahmedalsudani wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing clickbaity about the title. It says two pages without describing how much effort went into those two pages. Two pages does not imply it's easy. It implies it's elegant, which probably requires a fair amount of effort.

It's been interesting to watch the rapid degradation of the term clickbait, we've quickly gone from the original targets of the term ("Local mother discovers one small trick", "He did X, you WON'T believe what happened next"), to it now being used in probably a third of HN's comment sections to describe any title which is even mildly editorialised and not a longwinded statement of plain facts.

If anything I think the term clickbait is used more appropriately now. "Local mother discovers one small trick" is terrible clickbait because most people are used to it now in the same way a Nigerian prince scam won't work on most people.

Clickbait is anything that gets you to click on an article. In some cases, it can be good clickbait and an equally good article and in other cases it can be bad clickbait where the title states facts but the facts are misleading or require a specific interpretation or need more context or don't accurately describe the essence of the article.

Re: Mathematician Solves Sensitivity Conjecture in Two Pages (2019)

#66

Post by jstanley »

angry_octet wrote: post #31
wenc wrote: post #16

I remember this article from 2019. I remember the writing style struck me then as being a little strange. My first thought was "who's the mathematician"? But the article doesn't actually mention the author's name until a few paragraphs down, electing instead to put the spotlight on Scott Aaronson and other commentators. I felt then as I do now that it was a little lacking in respect.

I agree, it's extremely distasteful. I feel the author has cut their teeth writing clickbait headlines to make information extraction harder, the way a supermarket puts the milk at the far corner of the store. I want a link/cite to the original paper in the first para.

> I want a link/cite to the original paper in the first para.

I'm guessing this might have changed since you wrote your comment, but the very first sentence does contain a link to the paper.

The paper itself is longer than 2 pages (but not by a lot!) but the "Proof of the main theorem" section is only 2 pages long.

Re: Mathematician Solves Sensitivity Conjecture in Two Pages (2019)

#67

Post by JadeNB »

wenc wrote: post #16

I remember this article from 2019. I remember the writing style struck me then as being a little strange. My first thought was "who's the mathematician"? But the article doesn't actually mention the author's name until a few paragraphs down, electing instead to put the spotlight on Scott Aaronson and other commentators. I felt then as I do now that it was a little lacking in respect.

To be fair, it does link to the paper in literally the first words, which is in some sense the most important thing. But let's go ahead and record the name here since the article takes its time: the solver is Hao Huang.

Re: Mathematician Solves Sensitivity Conjecture in Two Pages (2019)

#68

Post by gorkish »

wenc wrote: post #16

I remember this article from 2019. I remember the writing style struck me then as being a little strange. My first thought was "who's the mathematician"? But the article doesn't actually mention the author's name until a few paragraphs down, electing instead to put the spotlight on Scott Aaronson and other commentators. I felt then as I do now that it was a little lacking in respect.

Yes! How hard is it to have a headline that says "Mathematician Hao Huang solves Sensititvity Conjecture"? It's nearly impossible to distinguish news stories from the force-fed advertorials as it is. Now journalists are electing to imitate them?! "Texas Teacher Discovers Mortgage Loophole" indeed....

Re: Mathematician Solves Sensitivity Conjecture in Two Pages (2019)

#69

Post by LolWolf »

LolWolf wrote: post #26

The sensitivity conjecture is actually pretty simple to understand, intuitively. (Its reduction to applications, and its proof, of course, are both a little bit more of the "magical" parts so-to-speak.) The 'canonical' way of thinking about it is in terms of the hypercube graph , which is defined in the following way: - The dimension-0 hypercube graph is... just a single vertex. . - The dimension-1 hypercube graph is…

This is a bit of a random comment @dang, but it's always a bit of a shame when a long explanation gets posted and the comment that it is responding to dies or is downvoted for some reason or another. I've seen this happen a few times and am wondering if there is a possible fix?

I guess this is the risk one takes when responding to comments, but it feels like there might be a reasonable tradeoff/possible solution! :)

Re: Mathematician Solves Sensitivity Conjecture in Two Pages (2019)

#70

Post by ahmedalsudani »

bidirectional wrote: post #57
ahmedalsudani wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing clickbaity about the title. It says two pages without describing how much effort went into those two pages. Two pages does not imply it's easy. It implies it's elegant, which probably requires a fair amount of effort.

It's been interesting to watch the rapid degradation of the term clickbait, we've quickly gone from the original targets of the term ("Local mother discovers one small trick", "He did X, you WON'T believe what happened next"), to it now being used in probably a third of HN's comment sections to describe any title which is even mildly editorialised and not a longwinded statement of plain facts.

Same with troll. Anybody you disagree with is a troll nowadays.

Thinking about it some more, that also applies to "alt-right", "SJW", "Nazi", ...

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