Related and a great read: "The Joy of X: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity" by Steven Strogatz:
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/13356649-the-joy-of-x
Terence Tao explains 6 essential mathematical concepts [video]
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Re: Terence Tao explains 6 essential mathematical concepts [video]
#32Numbers Algebra Geometry Probability Analysis Dynamics I loved this talk, but these concepts are like an attempt at dimensional reduction of math research, science, the academics knowledge. I would have loved to have his thoughts on the mathematical mind, the process, how to reason, infer vs deduct, abstract, prove.. I don’t really know, what are the primitives, essential concepts of math reasoning?
Why do you feel this is a reduction? If anything, it is an attempt to summarize the various areas of math and how they relate to each other.
Isn't every summarization a reduction?
Re: Terence Tao explains 6 essential mathematical concepts [video]
#33Related and a great read: "The Joy of X: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity" by Steven Strogatz: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/13356649-the-joy-of-x
The Joy of X and I think now renamed to “The Joy of y” is a great podcast for general knowledge building!
Re: Terence Tao explains 6 essential mathematical concepts [video]
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was expected that people without established credibility would be looked down on for using AI, but it's been weird to see people with all the credibility in the world lose it for embracing AI.
Tao gives or takes credibility from AI, not the other way around.
Is Tao the rising angel? Or AI the falling ape?
--Another Terry, Perhaps
AI-avatar-of-Tao wielded by an internet rando lies to or gets fooled by Tao, not the other way around
--Me, attempting to take your Untouchable* joke all the way to a (sociopathic, one-party) joke
*https://archive.ph/2023.11.28-152809/https://www.astralcodex...
Re: Terence Tao explains 6 essential mathematical concepts [video]
#35Numbers Algebra Geometry Probability Analysis Dynamics I loved this talk, but these concepts are like an attempt at dimensional reduction of math research, science, the academics knowledge. I would have loved to have his thoughts on the mathematical mind, the process, how to reason, infer vs deduct, abstract, prove.. I don’t really know, what are the primitives, essential concepts of math reasoning?
So… numbers, algebra, geometry, probability, analysis, dynamics are not the primitives or essentials ?
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Re: Terence Tao explains 6 essential mathematical concepts [video]
#36You can pre order his book Six Math Essentials at https://a.co/d/0e89Jcjf
Re: Terence Tao explains 6 essential mathematical concepts [video]
#37His lectures are gold, always manage to unlock a new perspective. Wish he taught my undergrad courses!
Re: Terence Tao explains 6 essential mathematical concepts [video]
#38wow, that's really nice
Re: Terence Tao explains 6 essential mathematical concepts [video]
#39Saw him explain Fourier transforms once; it finally clicked. Probably another masterclass in clarity.
Re: Terence Tao explains 6 essential mathematical concepts [video]
#40I respected Terence Tao but since listening to his "Mathematics in the age of AI" talk, I've become a fan. I have had nobody else explain so succinctly what is the purpose of Mathematical research, why it matters, and why it is so important to preserve the ways we do math. Even more importantly, I feel it resonates so well with every other field AI is taking over.
I also loved this talk (went through printed version: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49362728)
Tao talks how this has become even more valuable in maths: understanding, verification, exposition, community judgment, synthesis and canonicalization given how proof generation has become easy (which has historically been considered most valuable). So I just mapped this to coding also in my expereience and broader industry sentiment. Code generation was always the hardest and most valuable part. Now that is the cheapest part with claude code and other AI tools. But taking the candidate output (code) and building harness around it like verification, exposition, human understandability have become all the more important. Not just generate code, but generate code that other engineers can confidently modify and extend. Or even better - generate reusable canonical abstractions that improve codebase.