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Ramanujan Surprises Again (2015)

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11–20 of 96 posts

Re: Ramanujan Surprises Again (2015)

#11
post #7

Great read! When you first hear the taxicab number story, your initial impression is to be struck by Ramanujan's innate calculating capability. It's interesting to find out that the real coincidence here is that Hardy rode in a taxicab whose number had happened to show up in Ramanujan's investigations of Fermat's last theorem.

A lot of genius stories are like this. I was also under the illusion that these guys could just do things that fast, but at some point, I read Feynman's biography where he explicitly talks about how he used to solve homework problems or something beforehand and then he used to pretend that he found the solution while solving it if his classmates asked. That threw me for a loop and I started believing shit like no one…

What was the quote about Feynman? That he loved to cultivate anecdotes about himself or something similar? Makes a lot of his stories make a lot more sense, too.

Re: Ramanujan Surprises Again (2015)

#12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of genius stories are like this. I was also under the illusion that these guys could just do things that fast, but at some point, I read Feynman's biography where he explicitly talks about how he used to solve homework problems or something beforehand and then he used to pretend that he found the solution while solving it if his classmates asked. That threw me for a loop and I started believing shit like no one…

What was the quote about Feynman? That he loved to cultivate anecdotes about himself or something similar? Makes a lot of his stories make a lot more sense, too.

It's a rant by fellow Physicist Gell-Mann.

Re: Ramanujan Surprises Again (2015)

#13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of genius stories are like this. I was also under the illusion that these guys could just do things that fast, but at some point, I read Feynman's biography where he explicitly talks about how he used to solve homework problems or something beforehand and then he used to pretend that he found the solution while solving it if his classmates asked. That threw me for a loop and I started believing shit like no one…

What was the quote about Feynman? That he loved to cultivate anecdotes about himself or something similar? Makes a lot of his stories make a lot more sense, too.

I think it's pretty plausible that he was a raging egomaniac (narcissist, perhaps?).

Undoubtedly a great thinker and genius, but that doesn't say very much about personality traits.

Re: Ramanujan Surprises Again (2015)

#14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of genius stories are like this. I was also under the illusion that these guys could just do things that fast, but at some point, I read Feynman's biography where he explicitly talks about how he used to solve homework problems or something beforehand and then he used to pretend that he found the solution while solving it if his classmates asked. That threw me for a loop and I started believing shit like no one…

What was the quote about Feynman? That he loved to cultivate anecdotes about himself or something similar? Makes a lot of his stories make a lot more sense, too.

Feynman even has his own 1729 anecdote: https://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/abacus/feynman.html

Re: Ramanujan Surprises Again (2015)

#15

The taxi cab story is easily a top-5 math story, and is quintessential Ramanujan. Has there been a genius of his kind since? Maybe Terry Tao, but his work also lacks the ease and lack of machinery that Ramanujan had. Truly amazing.

There have been lots. Twenty? Thirty? A hundred? It was a good century plus for mathematical genius.

Re: Ramanujan Surprises Again (2015)

#16
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was the quote about Feynman? That he loved to cultivate anecdotes about himself or something similar? Makes a lot of his stories make a lot more sense, too.

I think it's pretty plausible that he was a raging egomaniac (narcissist, perhaps?). Undoubtedly a great thinker and genius, but that doesn't say very much about personality traits.

[deleted]

Re: Ramanujan Surprises Again (2015)

#17

The taxi cab story is easily a top-5 math story, and is quintessential Ramanujan. Has there been a genius of his kind since? Maybe Terry Tao, but his work also lacks the ease and lack of machinery that Ramanujan had. Truly amazing.

Has there been a genius of his kind since? Maybe Terry Tao, but his work also lacks the ease and lack of machinery that Ramanujan had. Truly amazing.

It's hard to compare mathematicians, but I suppose Erdős[1] would be in the conversation.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s

Re: Ramanujan Surprises Again (2015)

#18
post #9
post #4

He credited his work to his family goddess. From wikipedia: "A deeply religious Hindu, Ramanujan credited his substantial mathematical capacities to divinity, and said the mathematical knowledge he displayed was revealed to him by his family goddess. "An equation for me has no meaning," he once said, "unless it expresses a thought of God.""

Mathematics are the best expression of the transcendental divine. Pythagoras and Plato had the same perspective.

Yes, it looks like for many mathematicians, the confusion between stable conceptual foundation and eternal objective reality is too seductive to not fall in the illusion of identity of things locally indistinguishables.

Re: Ramanujan Surprises Again (2015)

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of genius stories are like this. I was also under the illusion that these guys could just do things that fast, but at some point, I read Feynman's biography where he explicitly talks about how he used to solve homework problems or something beforehand and then he used to pretend that he found the solution while solving it if his classmates asked. That threw me for a loop and I started believing shit like no one…

What was the quote about Feynman? That he loved to cultivate anecdotes about himself or something similar? Makes a lot of his stories make a lot more sense, too.

From Murray Gell-Mann: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnMsgxIIQEE

Several clips from Gell-Mann's Web of Stories interview (late 1990s) pertain to his on-again off-again collaboration with Feynman.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2sEW4ggVlA&list=PLVV0r6CmEs...

Re: Ramanujan Surprises Again (2015)

#20
post #7

Great read! When you first hear the taxicab number story, your initial impression is to be struck by Ramanujan's innate calculating capability. It's interesting to find out that the real coincidence here is that Hardy rode in a taxicab whose number had happened to show up in Ramanujan's investigations of Fermat's last theorem.

I'm not sure I'd call it coincidence rather "being struck by the vast amount of time and passion Ramanujan put into mathematics". I'd be absolutely amazed if he couldn't have recalled a similarly obscure fact for most numbers below 10,000.
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