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Fitting an elephant with four non-zero parameters

arxiv.org

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Re: Fitting an elephant with four non-zero parameters

#3

Post by lazamar »

Lol. Loved it.

This was a lovely passage from Dyson’s Web of Stories interview, and it struck a chord with me, like it clearly did with the authors too.

It happened when Dyson took the preliminary results of his work on the Pseudoscalar theory of Pions to Fermi and Fermi very quickly dismissed the whole thing. It was a shock to Dyson but freed him from wasting more time on it.

Fermi: When one does a theoretical calculation, either you have a clear physical module in mind or a rigorous mathematical basis. You have neither. How many free parameters did you use for your fitting?

Dyson: 4

Fermi: You know, Johnny Von Neumann always used to say ‘with four parameters I can fit an elephant; and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk’.

Re: Fitting an elephant with four non-zero parameters

#5

Post by parker-3461 »

EdwardCoffin wrote: post #2

Freeman Dyson recounts the episode [1] that inspired this paper in his web of life interviews (prepositioned to the fitting an elephant bit) [2] [1] https://youtu.be/hV41QEKiMlM [2] https://youtu.be/hV41QEKiMlM?t=118

Thanks for linking these, I was not very familiar of these works/discussions taking place in the past, but these really helped establish the context. Very grateful that these videos are readily available.

Re: Fitting an elephant with four non-zero parameters

#6

Post by btown »

dheera wrote: post #4

I wish there was more humor on arXiv. If I could make a discovery in my own time without using company resources I would absolutely publish it in the most humorous way possible.

There's plenty of humor on arXiv, and that's part of why it's so incredible!

Some lists:

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/86346/is-it-ok-...

https://www.ellipsix.net/arxiv-joke-papers.html

Re: Fitting an elephant with four non-zero parameters

#7

Post by azeemba »

btown wrote: post #6
dheera wrote: post #4

I wish there was more humor on arXiv. If I could make a discovery in my own time without using company resources I would absolutely publish it in the most humorous way possible.

There's plenty of humor on arXiv, and that's part of why it's so incredible! Some lists: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/86346/is-it-ok-... https://www.ellipsix.net/arxiv-joke-papers.html

Consider posting this as a new post! It seems like a fun list to read through

Re: Fitting an elephant with four non-zero parameters

#8

Post by EdwardCoffin »

parker-3461 wrote: post #5
EdwardCoffin wrote: post #2

Freeman Dyson recounts the episode [1] that inspired this paper in his web of life interviews (prepositioned to the fitting an elephant bit) [2] [1] https://youtu.be/hV41QEKiMlM [2] https://youtu.be/hV41QEKiMlM?t=118

Thanks for linking these, I was not very familiar of these works/discussions taking place in the past, but these really helped establish the context. Very grateful that these videos are readily available.

I listened to the whole series with Dyson some time in the past year. It was well worth it. I also listened to the series with Murray Gell-Mann [1] and Hans Bethe [2]. All time well worth spending, and I've been thinking of downloading all the bits, concatenating them into audio files, and putting them on my phone for listening to when out on walks (I'm pretty sure the videos do not add anything essential: it's just a video of the interviewee talking - no visual aids).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxKFx-0lsQD...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvgLyzTEmJk&list=PLVV0r6CmEs...

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