Terence Tao's General Exam • Hacker News Board

Re: Terence Tao's General Exam

#21

Post by lamnk » Sat, Jul 16, 2011, 10:26 PM UTC

bdhe wrote: post #3

Cyph0n wrote: post #2

I read the whole thing, and it surprisingly turned out to be pretty interesting (even though I didn't understand a thing). I had to look up who the guy was afterwards though. A smart fellow indeed.

A smart fellow indeed. He is one of the few people I know who has an insanely prolific online presence. His blog, What's New ( https://terrytao.wordpress.com/ ) has hundreds of detailed articles on various math topics and occasionally I find myself using it as a beginner's reference to detailed topics. He's also published his blog posts as books. It is astounding how one person can produce so much intellectual output…

Come on, he is a prodigy. The only person I know that have matched impressive ingenuity is Stephen Wolfram.

Great, now after reading their bio, i'm feeling more depressed ... sigh

Re: Terence Tao's General Exam

#22

Post by a3_nm » Sat, Jul 16, 2011, 10:41 PM UTC

neworder wrote: post #9

I absolutely love the ending: "After this, they decided to pass me, though they said that my harmonic analysis was far from satisfactory. :(" especially when compared to the Fields Medal citation, where Tao is awarded the medal "for his contributions to partial differential equations, combinatorics, harmonic analysis and additive number theory". Seems he did learn a bit of harmonic analysis in the meantime.

... or that this sort of exams don't measure correctly the ability to get Fields medals.

Re: Terence Tao's General Exam

#23

Post by shadowmatter » Sat, Jul 16, 2011, 10:52 PM UTC

I did a math minor at UCLA, and he taught the upper-division linear algebra class I took. He didn't like the book, so he decided to write his own lecture notes, which formed a book unto themselves. They're still available online at http://www.math.ucla.edu/~tao/resource/general/115a.3.02f/. If you ever have the itch to learn linear algebra, read them, they're quite excellent.

It was pretty obvious at class and obvious hours he was crazy smart -- but I had no way of knowing he was Fields Medal smart. But unlike other crazy smart professors I've had, he's a very gifted teacher as well. I mostly learned by reading the books and considered the lectures as an ancillary learning aid, but his lectures were very illuminating. I'm glad he now has a blog to teach a wider audience at http://terrytao.wordpress.com/, but unfortunately most of it is beyond what I can understand. If you're a math die-hard, be sure to read that.

Re: Terence Tao's General Exam

#24

Post by spearo77 » Sat, Jul 16, 2011, 11:00 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #5

Advice: next time you feel an urge to frustration or mockery of non-computer-professionals, pull this up and start reading it from the top. And this is the general exam.

You might also enjoy browsing his Math Overflow questions and answers.. http://mathoverflow.net/users/766/terry-tao

Re: Terence Tao's General Exam

#25

Post by acangiano » Sat, Jul 16, 2011, 11:54 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #5

Advice: next time you feel an urge to frustration or mockery of non-computer-professionals, pull this up and start reading it from the top. And this is the general exam.

In my experience programmers don't mock mathematicians and other hard science and engineering specialists. They are seen as more or less peers. They tend to mock marketers, MBAs, sociology majors, etc.

Re: Terence Tao's General Exam

#26

Post by tomrod » Sun, Jul 17, 2011, 1:26 AM UTC

a3_nm wrote: post #22

neworder wrote: post #9

I absolutely love the ending: "After this, they decided to pass me, though they said that my harmonic analysis was far from satisfactory. :(" especially when compared to the Fields Medal citation, where Tao is awarded the medal "for his contributions to partial differential equations, combinatorics, harmonic analysis and additive number theory". Seems he did learn a bit of harmonic analysis in the meantime.

... or that this sort of exams don't measure correctly the ability to get Fields medals.

I find this true in many PhD fields (and their relative measures of success)

Re: Terence Tao's General Exam

#27

Post by leilavc » Sun, Jul 17, 2011, 1:48 AM UTC

lamnk wrote: post #21

bdhe wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A smart fellow indeed. He is one of the few people I know who has an insanely prolific online presence. His blog, What's New ( https://terrytao.wordpress.com/ ) has hundreds of detailed articles on various math topics and occasionally I find myself using it as a beginner's reference to detailed topics. He's also published his blog posts as books. It is astounding how one person can produce so much intellectual output…

Come on, he is a prodigy. The only person I know that have matched impressive ingenuity is Stephen Wolfram. Great, now after reading their bio, i'm feeling more depressed ... sigh

Great - now go and read this (http://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one-have-to...) to cheer yourself up.

Re: Terence Tao's General Exam

#28

Post by robertk » Sun, Jul 17, 2011, 1:57 AM UTC

lamnk wrote: post #21

bdhe wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A smart fellow indeed. He is one of the few people I know who has an insanely prolific online presence. His blog, What's New ( https://terrytao.wordpress.com/ ) has hundreds of detailed articles on various math topics and occasionally I find myself using it as a beginner's reference to detailed topics. He's also published his blog posts as books. It is astounding how one person can produce so much intellectual output…

Come on, he is a prodigy. The only person I know that have matched impressive ingenuity is Stephen Wolfram. Great, now after reading their bio, i'm feeling more depressed ... sigh

I hope that was facetious.

Re: Terence Tao's General Exam

#29

Post by pagefruit » Sun, Jul 17, 2011, 2:17 AM UTC

tokenadult wrote: post #11

You can see notes about the general exams of many other famous people who have studied math at Princeton at the base URL: http://www.math.princeton.edu/graduate/generals/ I discovered this link years ago and enjoyed reading accounts of math learners about what they knew at the beginning of their graduate studies. "This page is maintained by Alison Miller," who just happens to be the first United States woman to win a…

Another funny one (also by a familiar name, though perhaps not as much in contest math circles) is Manjul Bhargava's: http://www.math.princeton.edu/graduate/generals/bhargava_man...

In this case, the funniness is for the totally opposite reason: sounds like Bhargava totally crushed his exam.

Also, is anyone surprised how well everybody seems to remember the details of their exams?! I suspect I'd barely remember anything afterwards...

Re: Terence Tao's General Exam

#30

Post by pagefruit » Sun, Jul 17, 2011, 2:20 AM UTC

shadowmatter wrote: post #23

I did a math minor at UCLA, and he taught the upper-division linear algebra class I took. He didn't like the book, so he decided to write his own lecture notes, which formed a book unto themselves. They're still available online at http://www.math.ucla.edu/~tao/resource/general/115a.3.02f/ . If you ever have the itch to learn linear algebra, read them, they're quite excellent. It was pretty obvious at class and obvio…

One awesome and pretty understandable blog post of his is a layman's introduction to Quantum Mechanics, using Tomb Raider as an analogy:

http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2007/02/26/quantum-mechanics-a...