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2014 Fields Medals announced

mathunion.org

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Re: 2014 Fields Medals announced

#21

Post by titter »

kiyoto wrote: post #4
IvyMike wrote: post #2

Notably, Maryam Mirzakhani is the first woman to win a Fields medal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryam_Mirzakhani

Also notably, 1. Mirzakhani is the first Iranian 2. Bhargava is the first Canadian 3. Hairer is the first Austrian 4. Avila is the first Brazilian

Since there are still ~200 countries without a Fields Medal, this isn't mathematically remarkable in comparison to the parent point.

So, I understand instead that you're identifying this as notable for the following reason:

There are 100 times more women in the world than Canadians, yet women and Canadians have the same number of Fields Medals.

Re: 2014 Fields Medals announced

#22

Post by boxyhendrix »

boxyhendrix wrote: post #9
IvyMike wrote: post #2

Notably, Maryam Mirzakhani is the first woman to win a Fields medal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryam_Mirzakhani

Thank you for pointing that out. I hadn't actually noticed after glancing at the pictures that a woman was among the winners. EDIT - I'm not trying to be funny, her hairstyle makes her look like she has a receding hairline so I thought she was a man.

Wow! I seem to have touched a nerve.

Re: 2014 Fields Medals announced

#23

Post by sanj »

27182818284 wrote: post #19
S4M wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more I read HN, the more I am impressed by the diversity of its readers. Now we have the cousin of a field medalist, nothing less!

You should see one of my all-time favorite Hacker news threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079

I'm finally beginning to appreciate how my embarrassing behavior ends up trotted out regularly.

Re: 2014 Fields Medals announced

#24

Post by sanj »

nraynaud wrote: post #18

Haha, "But Khot’s Unique Games Conjecture has already amply proven its value, even should it ultimately be disproven. It has cast a bright light on previously dim areas of computational complexity and provided critical insight — and, yes, Khot has also used it to prove major results, ones that stand regardless of its truth." weak people conjecture and then get results "if my conjecture stands". This guy is a black be…

My world got a little smaller. Khot's advisor -- Sanjeev Arora -- was the guy who cemented my decision of where to go to school.

Re: 2014 Fields Medals announced

#25

Post by johnb556677 »

The Nevanlinna Prize was also awarded. This is the award mathematicians give to theoretical computer scientists. This year the winner is Subhash Khot from NYU. His main result is the Unique Games Conjecture (UGC) and how it can be used to obtain hardness of approximation results for algorithmic problems. For example, it is used to show that MaxCut cannot be approximated better than a factor of 0.878.. unless UGC does not hold. Remarkably this exact approximation factor is achievable by the breakthrough SDP algorithm of Goemans and Williamson. It is not currently clear if UGC is true and the opinions of theoreticians are split.

Re: 2014 Fields Medals announced

#26

Post by cycrutchfield »

sanj wrote: post #24
nraynaud wrote: post #18

Haha, "But Khot’s Unique Games Conjecture has already amply proven its value, even should it ultimately be disproven. It has cast a bright light on previously dim areas of computational complexity and provided critical insight — and, yes, Khot has also used it to prove major results, ones that stand regardless of its truth." weak people conjecture and then get results "if my conjecture stands". This guy is a black be…

My world got a little smaller. Khot's advisor -- Sanjeev Arora -- was the guy who cemented my decision of where to go to school.

Nice humblebrag, bro

Re: 2014 Fields Medals announced

#27

Post by cycrutchfield »

nraynaud wrote: post #18

Haha, "But Khot’s Unique Games Conjecture has already amply proven its value, even should it ultimately be disproven. It has cast a bright light on previously dim areas of computational complexity and provided critical insight — and, yes, Khot has also used it to prove major results, ones that stand regardless of its truth." weak people conjecture and then get results "if my conjecture stands". This guy is a black be…

"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."

Strange that you feel the need to comment on a topic that you appear to know absolutely nothing about.

Re: 2014 Fields Medals announced

#28

Post by grayclhn »

rabarbers wrote: post #15
bwy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry WhitneyLand. In case you haven't noticed, the one thing Hacker News is most afraid of is becoming anything like Reddit.

I do not understand why should HN be afraid to give reasonable reason for down voting. Looking at picture I also thought that Maryam Mirzakhani is man. I understood my mistake only by reading down-voted comments. Someone is spoiling valuable comments and it happens too often. Sad.

A long discussion of why something was downvoted (like this one) degrades the quality of the thread, and it's usually obvious why the comment might have been downvoted, especially after reading the guidelines.[1]

W/ respect to your specific "sad" example, the topmost comment on that thread gives the relevant information and has not been downvoted (as I'm reading it). The downvoted comment below it doesn't seem to add anything useful (but I didn't downvote it).

Plus, if you think something's been downvoted inappropriately, vote it up. People make mistakes sometimes.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: 2014 Fields Medals announced

#29

Post by S4M »

27182818284 wrote: post #19
S4M wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more I read HN, the more I am impressed by the diversity of its readers. Now we have the cousin of a field medalist, nothing less!

You should see one of my all-time favorite Hacker news threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079

Man, this guy is impressive as well.

Re: 2014 Fields Medals announced

#30

Post by IvyMike »

titter wrote: post #21
kiyoto wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also notably, 1. Mirzakhani is the first Iranian 2. Bhargava is the first Canadian 3. Hairer is the first Austrian 4. Avila is the first Brazilian

Since there are still ~200 countries without a Fields Medal, this isn't mathematically remarkable in comparison to the parent point. So, I understand instead that you're identifying this as notable for the following reason: There are 100 times more women in the world than Canadians, yet women and Canadians have the same number of Fields Medals.

First of all, there's not enough data to be statistically significant in any of my ramblings, so it's all kind of hand-wavy and I apologize for that.

But my general feeling is that there used to be a few "powerhouse" countries and institutions that dominated, but that has been changing for many years. There's a lot more diversity these days. So I think kiyoto's point speaks to the changes there.

In 1950, it would have been pretty inconceivable that a woman from Iran would have had the access and opportunities to contribute to mathematics in a way that would have earned a Fields medal; in 2014, it's a first-time feat; hopefully, in the future, it quickly becomes mundane.

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