151–160 of 186 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But I don't know that from the proposed re-titling of the article. The importance of the conjecture is more salient for the general reader than the (uninformative) names of the people who conjectured in the first place.
It's loosely explained deep down in the article.
“There was this inescapable sameness, in a way. No matter what I did, I was in the same place doing mostly the same things,” she said. “I was very isolated, and nothing I could do could really change that. I’d wake up on certain days and realize, I’m just older.” I finally have something in common with a math prodigy.
Thank God she found math instead of Factorio.
“There was this inescapable sameness, in a way. No matter what I did, I was in the same place doing mostly the same things,” she said. “I was very isolated, and nothing I could do could really change that. I’d wake up on certain days and realize, I’m just older.” I finally have something in common with a math prodigy.
Loneliness is maththematician best friend.
>A few more months in prison and I would have proved all the great theorems of the time.
André Weil
- moved between countries or first/second gen immigrant? check - home schooled? check This on top of her extraordinary talent and hard work. Institutional education truly is a great leveler, at both the top and bottom.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe hot take… I can see the point of sameness in homeschooling, but compared to traditional education? I’m not sure how much flexibility one would have to teach oneself calculus by 11 or the equivalent of an undergrad in math by 14! That flexibility must be found in something non-traditional! I’m no prodigy at all whatsoever but school was mostly dull and filled with teenager drama! Nobody knew what Linux was, care…
its so much better nowadays. I"m 40 now and I'm low key jelous of kids today. Today if you want to learn to code, you have freecode camp and chatgpt to ask questions. Math? there's mathacademy and khanacademy. There are so many options now for learning stuff that we didn't have
I am learning bit and pieces on how to do this but it's a long and uncertain process. Conflict monitoring is willpower is a new concept to me but it gave me a framework on how to improve my discipline over time.
Rather than speaking about her age or the vague notion of talent, I'd be much more interested in why the rest of the academia was unable to replicate her methods in 40 years or so. From her own admission, it was throwing different ideas and approaches until she saw a disprecancy that ultimately disproved the theorem. There should be many people far more experienced who do have the knowledge to do this, but why did they not? This dosen't look like a intuitive jump, seems more like building a test case that fully stressed the theorem.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please don't do this here.
Do what exactly? The parent asked why there’s so many photos of her staring into the distance. Whats your theory on why there’s so many photos?
[1] https://www.quantamagazine.org/mathematical-thinking-isnt-wh...
[2] https://www.quantamagazine.org/perplexing-the-web-one-probab...
[3] https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-failure-has-made-mathemat...