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At 17, Hannah Cairo solved a major math mystery

quantamagazine.org

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Re: At 17, Hannah Cairo solved a major math mystery

#171

Post by TrackerFF »

getnormality wrote: post #108
TrackerFF wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see your point, but undergraduate degrees should provide a wide foundation, with little specialization. As you progress to a masters degree, you become more specialized. A doctorate is as specialized as it gets. It is entirely possible for people to intensely focus on a very, very narrow thing - and ignore everything else. Even to such a degree that they can write a doctorate on it. But I don't think that's a good…

The woman is not being "made" to do anything. She's already world-class at math and wants to maximize the impact of her specialized talents, so she's going straight to PhD. I don't think we need to nanny people who break the mold with extraordinary talents to conform to some generic correct educational sequence. They've proven they know how to make something of themselves and their own ideas should count for more.

Imagine if every AI researcher out there was allowed to skip even the most fundamental philosophy class(es).

I don’t know about you, but exposing these prodigies to some shared classes is not all that bad. Personally I think every student should be forced to take a class on ethics.

Re: At 17, Hannah Cairo solved a major math mystery

#172

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

Timwi wrote: post #141
Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Offtopic, but I am 17 too just like Hannah Cairo but nothing too groundbreaking till now I suppose and it absolutely brings me delight that I can talk to somebody who was a pupil of Dijkstra, I have heard a lot about dijkstra's algorithm's and I had forgotten about it and so I searched it right now, but the only thing I knew is that it is pretty popular algorithm. If I had to ask you kind sir, what would be the bigge…

> what would be the biggest life lesson (in coding, or anything general) Pursue what interests you and what fires up your passion, not what grown-ups tell you is “lucrative”, “prestigious”, “profitable” or somesuch.

I mean, my interests are just really niche in the sense that I like to glue projects and one of my favourite hobbies is to search if there is an open source replacement to something or if I can use open source things to do stuff

So there is intel tiber cloud and it gave me a free jupyter and I wanted to play minecraft server, so I went to something which is a fork of it and I saw that there was a guy who had created rootless patch of ssh but it wasn't working for me so I kindly asked them and they were really kind enough to help me and then I used something like pinggy or the thousand other cloudflare tunnel-esque solutions which work without any problem whatsoever directly through ssh

Earlier I used to use junest to then get something like ssh working.

Can I be honest? I am so proud of myself because I guess I did all this stuff an year ago but I still remember the day I asked my friend to join the mc server and I joined too, the ping sucked but 8 gigs ram or even more and no storage limits and complete freedom... and I thought of such stuff after almost 2 weeks of trying different things and learned a lot about nat punching etc.

So such stuff always makes really sense to me, just tinkering with software. But I feel like I need to create some professional software too in order to leave a legacy or just, I feel like, if I am being honest, that the things that I am doing aren't that valuable. Anybody can learn such stuff from me from some blog post I write but there is nothing that I can ever monetize.

I don't know why I am seeking monetization that much but its just that, I see all these kids hustling my age too and I feel like everyone's doing everything for the money... so why should I be any different. I get a lot of ideas but I feel like I can never earn a single cent out of it and I find it a little frustating. I feel less confident myself regarding if I will ever earn decent money or will just be a low level cog of this whole system.

Found it https://github.com/mkj/dropbear I really love this project so much, it really helped me do something really wonderful.

Re: At 17, Hannah Cairo solved a major math mystery

#173

Post by fmbb »

shermantanktop wrote: post #42

- 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.

Are home schooled over-represented among mathematicians that solved major math mysteries?

Wait that would not even prove anything.

Are there no mathematicians who solved major math mysteries that went to school?

Re: At 17, Hannah Cairo solved a major math mystery

#174

Post by lsuresh »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #54
anonzzzies wrote: post #5

As a pupil of Dijkstra and seeing at least some rise in formal verification because of the modern tooling and as a follower of Lean (and Agda, Coq, Idris* etc), I hope it will be at least a strive to deliver parts of proofs in code verifiable form. More machine verifiable building blocks will lead to a bettering of everything.

Offtopic, but I am 17 too just like Hannah Cairo but nothing too groundbreaking till now I suppose and it absolutely brings me delight that I can talk to somebody who was a pupil of Dijkstra, I have heard a lot about dijkstra's algorithm's and I had forgotten about it and so I searched it right now, but the only thing I knew is that it is pretty popular algorithm. If I had to ask you kind sir, what would be the bigge…

Not the one you asked, but here's what I would have told my 17 year old self.

* "Slope beats y-intercept." The best computer scientists and engineers I've ever worked with and/or mentored embodied this principle more than anything else.

* It can be tempting to over-optimize for short-term milestones (e.g., an important admissions exam, the next job or promotion), but there is a significant compounding value to knowledge accumulation and truly learning your craft well. Read and learn as much as you can, all the time, even if it isn't immediately necessary or useful.

Re: At 17, Hannah Cairo solved a major math mystery

#175

Post by IvyMike »

yumraj wrote: post #133

Wonder why Berkeley didn’t offer her PhD admission given that she was already working with the Prof there.

> When I was an undergraduate at MIT I loved it. I thought it was a great place, and I wanted to go to graduate school there too, of course. But when I went to Professor Slater and told him of my intentions, he said, "We won’t let you in here."

> I said, "What?"

> Slater said, "Why do you think you should go to graduate school at MIT?"

> "Because MIT is the best school for science in the country."

> "You think that?"

> "Yeah."

> "That's why you should go to some other school. You should find out how the rest of the world is."

-- Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman

Re: At 17, Hannah Cairo solved a major math mystery

#176

Post by shermantanktop »

fmbb wrote: post #173
shermantanktop wrote: post #42

- 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.

Are home schooled over-represented among mathematicians that solved major math mysteries? Wait that would not even prove anything. Are there no mathematicians who solved major math mysteries that went to school?

I don’t know about major math achievements- the n is pretty small- but homeschooled kids are overrepresented in geography bees, spelling bees, and other academic competitions at the high school level.

https://readlion.com/homeschoolers-dominate-inland-northwest...

It appears that homeschooling enables students to pursue singular passions further than students in schools. It’s not for everyone though.

My point was just to note some other interesting characteristics beyond the age and gender that show up in coverage.

Re: At 17, Hannah Cairo solved a major math mystery

#177

Post by ykonstant »

dekhn wrote: post #169
ykonstant wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but like the gp said, not even remotely close in skill.

how would you know for sure? I don't have the skill to evaluate somebody who has disproved one conjecture (maybe some recent techniques made it easier?) versus somebody who had an established pattern of doing excellent work.

I am familiar with both of their work and can judge the relative quality.

Re: At 17, Hannah Cairo solved a major math mystery

#178

Post by [deleted] »

TrackerFF wrote: post #171
getnormality wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The woman is not being "made" to do anything. She's already world-class at math and wants to maximize the impact of her specialized talents, so she's going straight to PhD. I don't think we need to nanny people who break the mold with extraordinary talents to conform to some generic correct educational sequence. They've proven they know how to make something of themselves and their own ideas should count for more.

Imagine if every AI researcher out there was allowed to skip even the most fundamental philosophy class(es). I don’t know about you, but exposing these prodigies to some shared classes is not all that bad. Personally I think every student should be forced to take a class on ethics.

[deleted]

Re: At 17, Hannah Cairo solved a major math mystery

#179

Post by garbthetill »

ykonstant wrote: post #177
dekhn wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how would you know for sure? I don't have the skill to evaluate somebody who has disproved one conjecture (maybe some recent techniques made it easier?) versus somebody who had an established pattern of doing excellent work.

I am familiar with both of their work and can judge the relative quality.

just to clarify, do you mean Kaczynski is not on the level of Grothendieck? In which I can agree

Re: At 17, Hannah Cairo solved a major math mystery

#180

Post by jagged-chisel »

baq wrote: post #136
jagged-chisel wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like a prepared presentation rather than notes.

If all presentations were prepared like this I’d probably attend them

Indeed. All presenters can take a lesson from this talented person.
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