For anyone behind the paywall, here's a pastebin link. The article was a bit long to break into comments. http://pastebin.com/Xtm3f64E
Just googling for the article's title leads to a link that works. They don't paywall people coming from Google
The Pursuit of Beauty: Yitang Zhang solves a pure-math mystery
11–20 of 33 posts
Re: The Pursuit of Beauty: Yitang Zhang solves a pure-math mystery
#12Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the author made an error. The author wrote:
"A prime from which you can remove numbers and still have a prime is a deletable prime, such as 1987".
However if you remove the 7, then the number is divisible by 2, so the statement: "A prime from which you can remove numbers and still have a prime is a deletable prime" does not apply to 1987.
Re: The Pursuit of Beauty: Yitang Zhang solves a pure-math mystery
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
I too have read my last complimentary article of the month, and am stuck behind the paywall. Could someone paste the article here?
Here's a pastebin link, the article was a bit long to break into comments. I hope that's okay. http://pastebin.com/Xtm3f64E
Thanks a bunch!
Re: The Pursuit of Beauty: Yitang Zhang solves a pure-math mystery
#14Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the author made an error. The author wrote: "A prime from which you can remove numbers and still have a prime is a deletable prime, such as 1987". However if you remove the 7, then the number is divisible by 2, so the statement: "A prime from which you can remove numbers and still have a prime is a deletable prime" does not apply to 1987.
The definition given in the article is an informal shortcut, the complete definition is http://mathworld.wolfram.com/DeletablePrime.html and 1987 is indeed a deletable prime (see http://oeis.org/A080608/b080608.txt for http://oeis.org/A080608).
Re: The Pursuit of Beauty: Yitang Zhang solves a pure-math mystery
#15Hardy's comment about math being a "young man's game" has bothered me since I read his "Course of Pure Mathematics" about 10 years ago. I'm sure there's at least a bit of truth to the statement that mathematical discovery is, in general, easier for younger minds, but it seems to be an unnecessary and harmful trope to propagate. Either you still have it, or you don't. Why does the Fields Medal care about age? If a 60…
At the risk of downvotes, I will state a whole bunch of [Citation Needed] BS, which is, nevertheless, empirically true & in Hardy's favor - 1. Cerebral atrophy affects left brain disproportionately more than the right 2. Math is predominantly a left-brain activity. 3. Ergo, short-term memory & dexterity with numbers generally degrades with age ( supposedly peaking at 25 & declining from then on). Most math majors I'v…
On the flip side, anyone who's in the social sciences can tell you that self-reporting is a terrible gauge.
Re: The Pursuit of Beauty: Yitang Zhang solves a pure-math mystery
#16There's an interesting (and impassioned) critique of this article at
http://www.angrymath.com/2015/02/yitang-zhang-article-in-new...
Re: The Pursuit of Beauty: Yitang Zhang solves a pure-math mystery
#17Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the author made an error. The author wrote: "A prime from which you can remove numbers and still have a prime is a deletable prime, such as 1987". However if you remove the 7, then the number is divisible by 2, so the statement: "A prime from which you can remove numbers and still have a prime is a deletable prime" does not apply to 1987.
> However if you remove the 7, then the number is divisible by 2, so the statement: "A prime from which you can remove numbers and still have a prime is a deletable prime" does not apply to 1987.
A deletable prime doesn't require that the deletion order start from the last digit; the deletion order for 1987 is:
1987 -> 197 -> either 19 or 17
Re: The Pursuit of Beauty: Yitang Zhang solves a pure-math mystery
#18There's an interesting (and impassioned) critique of this article at http://www.angrymath.com/2015/02/yitang-zhang-article-in-new...
Could you perhaps explain what you found interesting? It's an angry screed very revealing of its author's personality, but not particularly insightful about the article.
Re: The Pursuit of Beauty: Yitang Zhang solves a pure-math mystery
#19There's an interesting (and impassioned) critique of this article at http://www.angrymath.com/2015/02/yitang-zhang-article-in-new...
Could you perhaps explain what you found interesting? It's an angry screed very revealing of its author's personality, but not particularly insightful about the article.
I was thinking the same, the blogger appears to have a lot of things he's upset about and is taking them out on the article.
Re: The Pursuit of Beauty: Yitang Zhang solves a pure-math mystery
#20Hardy's comment about math being a "young man's game" has bothered me since I read his "Course of Pure Mathematics" about 10 years ago. I'm sure there's at least a bit of truth to the statement that mathematical discovery is, in general, easier for younger minds, but it seems to be an unnecessary and harmful trope to propagate. Either you still have it, or you don't. Why does the Fields Medal care about age? If a 60…
I think the degradation with age as in part bio/physiological might also be in part a matter of adjustment to circumstance. That is to say the really hard problems in mathematics (or physics) one generally doesn't get to work on full-time (since it's very likely that one will work on them for years without producing any results); the most likely path in academia is therefore to do mediocre -to fairly good research that produces results and publications.
When one compromises in to doing work that's less difficult than one can be doing because it's what's necessary career wise, it's not surprising that one's mental alacrity declines.
There are certainly exceptional people that can do one kind of thing for work (or tenure), and at the same time publish significant work in a parallel field - but I think it's rare.