A Math Genius Blooms Late and Conquers His Field
1–10 of 39 posts
Re: A Math Genius Blooms Late and Conquers His Field
#2[deleted]
Re: A Math Genius Blooms Late and Conquers His Field
#3It is always worthwhile to introduce the techniques from one field of study into another.
Re: A Math Genius Blooms Late and Conquers His Field
#4I would just like to express my gratitude to [Kevin Hartnett](https://www.wired.com/author/kevin-hartnett/) for making an enjoyable article that I could almost follow as a quantitatively minded programmer / non-mathematician. It makes sense saying that graphs are somehow a form of matroid. Even without knowing what a matroid is, I get a sense of the importance of spatial relationships.
Re: A Math Genius Blooms Late and Conquers His Field
#5As another user pointed out, why should be the chromatic polynomial of rectangle with deleted edge be: q^4 - 3q^3 + 2q^2 and not q * (q - 1)^3. A counter example: when q=2, we have two ways to color the rectangle with a deleted edge. Am I missing something?
I think fixating q as the number of possible ways to color the end points of the deleted edge leads to the wrong result.
Re: A Math Genius Blooms Late and Conquers His Field
#6Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14646280
Re: A Math Genius Blooms Late and Conquers His Field
#7I majored in math in undergrad, and I always daydreamed about solving difficult mathematical problems despite a lack of formal training. I even had a teacher that I had to "pretend to understand".
Seeing a real-world example of this fantasy come true is fascinating. The article was also surprisingly well-written; most mention of higher mathematics in the media is oversimplified to death, but this was an honest and yet approachable presentation of the Rota conjecture (now theorem).
By the way, here's another result on chromatic polynomials (proved first by I don't know, but re-discovered by my combinatorics class):
Define a "gluing" operation by taking two graphs and connecting them along a common vertex.
The chromatic polynomial, h(x), of the new graph, is the product of the chromatic polynomials of the subgraphs over x: h(x) = f(x)*g(x) / x.
Re: A Math Genius Blooms Late and Conquers His Field
#8Does getting an undergrad degree in astronomy and physics, and then a math PhD from UIUC, really count as "blooms late"? Sounds like a fairly standard career path to me.
Re: A Math Genius Blooms Late and Conquers His Field
#9> his father taught statistics and his mother became one of the first professors of Russian literature in South Korea
I notice that really talented people, always have talented parents. Rarely do I read stories about poor blue collar parents producing science wiz. It leads me to believe that genetics play a much bigger role in our intelligence than nurture.
Re: A Math Genius Blooms Late and Conquers His Field
#10> his father taught statistics and his mother became one of the first professors of Russian literature in South Korea I notice that really talented people, always have talented parents. Rarely do I read stories about poor blue collar parents producing science wiz. It leads me to believe that genetics play a much bigger role in our intelligence than nurture.
Doesn't it support nurture in a way though ?
Children with genius parents usually expose their children to high level content very early into their childhood. They also pass on a way of thinking and intuition of their subjects that a non-expert in the field won't have.