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2014 Fields Medals announced

mathunion.org

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Re: 2014 Fields Medals announced

#11

Post by S4M »

comatose_kid wrote: post #8

Amazing group of people. Manjul is my wife's cousin so I have heard of a few examples of his brilliance (like the time he corrected his mom, a Math prof, during one of her lectures - he was a middle-schooler at the time). Here's a nice piece NPR did on him: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4111253

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!

Re: 2014 Fields Medals announced

#12

Post by ekm2 »

'Manjul Bhargava completed all of his high school math and computer courses by age 14.[..] Princeton hired him at the rank of tenured full professor within only two years of finishing graduate school, which is considered a record in the Ivy League.'

Fascinating. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manjul_Bhargava

Re: 2014 Fields Medals announced

#13

Post by WhitneyLand »

bwy wrote: post #10
WhitneyLand wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the down vote, not funny at all? Hey I would be in support of them all getting the same money as Nobel or Abel laureates :).

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

Ah, thank you for pointing that out. I would agree with the anti-snark stance I just didn't perceive it quick enough in my own comment.

Re: 2014 Fields Medals announced

#15

Post by rabarbers »

bwy wrote: post #10
WhitneyLand wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the down vote, not funny at all? Hey I would be in support of them all getting the same money as Nobel or Abel laureates :).

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.

Re: 2014 Fields Medals announced

#16

Post by lotharbot »

bwy wrote: post #10
WhitneyLand wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the down vote, not funny at all? Hey I would be in support of them all getting the same money as Nobel or Abel laureates :).

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

Genuinely funny and on-topic humor is appreciated (see edw519's comment history for examples.) If the comment had been a subtle pun based on something from stochastic PDEs, it probably would have been upvoted.

We're not particularly interested in average jokes.

Re: 2014 Fields Medals announced

#18

Post by nraynaud »

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 belt, he makes a conjecture, gets a field medal for it, and then removes it from his proof ("just joking, it works wether it's true or not").

Still gets the medal for the now useless conjecture and not for the ultimate proof.

Re: 2014 Fields Medals announced

#19

Post by 27182818284 »

S4M wrote: post #11
comatose_kid wrote: post #8

Amazing group of people. Manjul is my wife's cousin so I have heard of a few examples of his brilliance (like the time he corrected his mom, a Math prof, during one of her lectures - he was a middle-schooler at the time). Here's a nice piece NPR did on him: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4111253

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

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