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

Paul Erdős (2000)

mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 87 posts

Re: Paul Erdős (2000)

#61

Post by misterkrabs »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #27
smabie wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From experience, surprisingly, no. It helps if you do it occasionally but when done regularly and at high doses, I ended up just getting cracked out and becoming.. for lack of a better word, kind of crazy. They are good for essays though.

Not sure what this tells us, we now have two anecdotes. The plural of anecdote not being data, I think it's dangerous to draw any kind of conclusion from these data points.

Made me laugh but you have a good point, really. Something less anecdotal: it's easier to ignore hunger.

Re: Paul Erdős (2000)

#62

Post by misterkrabs »

disgruntled101 wrote: post #23
behnamoh wrote: post #18

I think it's not just about the sheer amount of papers one writes, but also the impact they have on the literature. And for Euler, he was lucky to live in an era without the problems of lengthy review processes as we see today.

that's really debatable. Accomplish a lot in the general sense most likely, but if you want to be a world class mathematician meth wont be enough, it will just boost your already existing capabilities

Meth is different from amphetamine (unless you were just being hyperbolic - in which case, I'm sorry for being pedantic lol).

Re: Paul Erdős (2000)

#63

Post by sillysaurusx »

misterkrabs wrote: post #61
Godel_unicode wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what this tells us, we now have two anecdotes. The plural of anecdote not being data, I think it's dangerous to draw any kind of conclusion from these data points.

Made me laugh but you have a good point, really. Something less anecdotal: it's easier to ignore hunger.

There's also a massive difference in what exactly you're doing. Adderall != speed != Vyvanse, and different brands of Adderall have different effects.

You can find a detailed list here: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/know-your-amphetamines

(My own experience is limited to various brands of Adderall, Core Pharma being the worst, before settling on Teva for many years now. Having a good doctor who watches out for your health is important, and it's part of what helped me find a winning combination.)

Re: Paul Erdős (2000)

#64

Post by sillysaurusx »

dang wrote: post #42

If curious, past threads: Paul Erdős in Madras (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23593836 - June 2020 (13 comments) Erdős–Bacon number - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22305115 - Feb 2020 (35 comments) The Mathematical Nomad, Paul Erdős - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20483681 - July 2019 (32 comments) The Erdos Paradox - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18818511 - Jan 2019 (40 comments)…

This list seems autogenerated, but manually curated. It's way better than the results you get when visiting the "past" link. Even playing with the phrasing ("Paul Erdős" vs "Erdős") doesn't really help uncover lots of the threads you pulled up here.

If you happened to make this using publicly-available tools, I encourage you to someday write up what your technique is. I'm sure a lot of it is simply experience, but people like me might still learn a thing or two from your advice.

(If it's using private tools, it'd be wonderful to have them available to the wider community someday. But that's difficult, and delicate, so thanks for doing it manually in the meantime.)

Re: Paul Erdős (2000)

#65

Post by pmiller2 »

cambalache wrote: post #59
pmiller2 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most (not all) of Erdos work is considered of very limited quality Are you kidding? Do you have an example of a paper that you'd say was of "very limited quality?"

No. Are YOU kidding? Here it is the list of Erdos papers: https://users.renyi.hu/~p_erdos/Erdos.html Please list which papers would you put at the same level of the work of Grothendieck, Poincare, Cartan, Banach, Kolmogorov, Goedel, Schwartz, Perelman or Tao? Wikipedia explains it better than me: " Erdős was one of the most prolific publishers of papers in mathematical history, comparable only with Leonhard Euler; Er…

You seem to have an extremely high standard for what isn't of "very limited quality," if one has to aspire to the level of Grothendieck, Goedel, etc.. I've just barely skimmed the first few years and found several serviceable papers -- not terrible, not great, just average stuff like people would publish today.

But, since you asked, here's one of excellent quality: https://users.renyi.hu/~p_erdos/1949-03.pdf

Re: Paul Erdős (2000)

#66

Post by cambalache »

pmiller2 wrote: post #65
cambalache wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Are YOU kidding? Here it is the list of Erdos papers: https://users.renyi.hu/~p_erdos/Erdos.html Please list which papers would you put at the same level of the work of Grothendieck, Poincare, Cartan, Banach, Kolmogorov, Goedel, Schwartz, Perelman or Tao? Wikipedia explains it better than me: " Erdős was one of the most prolific publishers of papers in mathematical history, comparable only with Leonhard Euler; Er…

You seem to have an extremely high standard for what isn't of "very limited quality," if one has to aspire to the level of Grothendieck, Goedel, etc. . I've just barely skimmed the first few years and found several serviceable papers -- not terrible, not great, just average stuff like people would publish today. But, since you asked, here's one of excellent quality: https://users.renyi.hu/~p_erdos/1949-03.pdf

The original article compared Erdos to Euler. They are comparable only in sheer number of publications. Erdos was a nice and eccentric fellow and a competent mathematician who liked to solve specific problems with other colleagues . Erdos is not in the same universe of not only Euler but of any Fields medal winner. His made claim to fame is his "number", but so is Kevin Bacon's.

Re: Paul Erdős (2000)

#67

Post by pmiller2 »

cambalache wrote: post #66
pmiller2 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to have an extremely high standard for what isn't of "very limited quality," if one has to aspire to the level of Grothendieck, Goedel, etc. . I've just barely skimmed the first few years and found several serviceable papers -- not terrible, not great, just average stuff like people would publish today. But, since you asked, here's one of excellent quality: https://users.renyi.hu/~p_erdos/1949-03.pdf

The original article compared Erdos to Euler. They are comparable only in sheer number of publications. Erdos was a nice and eccentric fellow and a competent mathematician who liked to solve specific problems with other colleagues . Erdos is not in the same universe of not only Euler but of any Fields medal winner. His made claim to fame is his "number", but so is Kevin Bacon's.

Who was comparing him to any Fields medal winner? You said his papers were of "very limited quality." That's what I'm saying is untrue. That isn't to say there aren't some stinkers in the mix. Anyone who publishes 1500+ papers is going to have some stinkers. But, "very limited quality" as a general assessment is way, way off the mark, IMO.

Yes, Erdos and Euler are not really comparable, but that's mostly the effect of 250 years and a lot of drugs, IMO. :P

Re: Paul Erdős (2000)

#70

Post by TimTheTinker »

cambalache wrote: post #58
djmips wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you could have been Claude Shannon but he already solved those things. Sometimes coming later, the low hanging fruit has already been picked.

That is very relative, coming later there is a lot more fruit to pick

True, but positioning oneself to do so involves learning more now than it did back then.

I imagine the time investment required to contribute to a mathematical specialty increases logarithmically with time (and perhaps total knowledge accumulated is the reciprocal... though that assumes specialties get more and more narrow).

Post reply on HN