Is the apology for posting something that should have been HTML as a PDF?
Why Hypertext Markup Language rather than Portable Document Format? Because you like ads?
PDF is meant for paper. HTML is meant for screens.
A Mathematician's Apology (1940) [pdf]
21–30 of 36 posts
Re: A Mathematician's Apology (1940) [pdf]
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, it's not math that kills, it's people... I mean, I don't think it is fair to blame scientists, engineers, workers, etc. - let alone the tools that they use - for the way the product of their work is used. Also, to be fair, the elementary analysis book which Hardy wrote under the title A Course of Pure Mathematics by today's standards would hardly qualify as a book on 'pure math' anyway.
>I mean, I don't think it is fair to blame scientists, engineers, workers, etc. - let alone the tools that they use I think it should be fair. It's no secret what these precision guided bombs are being used for, so why should the nerds that continue to work on them be free of culpability?
The invention of the nuclear bomb has led to the most peaceful period in human history. So to whatever extent the scientists and engineers who had some part in creating those bombs are culpable, they should be considered heroes.
Re: A Mathematician's Apology (1940) [pdf]
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why Hypertext Markup Language rather than Portable Document Format? Because you like ads?
PDF is meant for paper. HTML is meant for screens.
Actually, 99% of written materials might be perfectly readable (on a computer screen) in plain text format. For them even HTML is an overkill. A good reader app will let you choose the RX ("reader's experience"), but even a simple text viewer/editor would do the job most of the time.
Re: A Mathematician's Apology (1940) [pdf]
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I mean, I don't think it is fair to blame scientists, engineers, workers, etc. - let alone the tools that they use I think it should be fair. It's no secret what these precision guided bombs are being used for, so why should the nerds that continue to work on them be free of culpability?
The invention of the nuclear bomb has led to the most peaceful period in human history. So to whatever extent the scientists and engineers who had some part in creating those bombs are culpable, they should be considered heroes.
No, it didn't. Democide in the 20th century, the death toll of which far outstripped the death toll from conventional warfare, reached its peak after the use of nuclear weapons against civilians in Japan. The notion that the post-nuclear era has been "peaceful" either absolutely or relatively is completely, ridiculously false.
Re: A Mathematician's Apology (1940) [pdf]
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why Hypertext Markup Language rather than Portable Document Format? Because you like ads?
PDF is meant for paper. HTML is meant for screens.
Learn LaTeX and then come back here. Or better yet, learn LaTeX, write some documents, wait 10 years, then come back after revisiting those documents.
I think I first started learning LaTeX in 2007 or 2008. I began writing HTML around 1995. IMO, anything resembling a "document" that you expect to be useful longer than a year or two should be written in LaTeX, or at least something based directly on TeX. Alternatively, just use plain text. Anything else just doesn't have a comparable shelf-life.
Whether it was intended to render to screen or print is totally irrelevant. If anything, stay away from screen-oriented formats because there hasn't been a standard "screen" format like, ever, with the possible exception of TTY geometries.
And output format isn't even the half of the relevant qualities to worry about when it comes to shelf-life. TeX is basically written in Pascal. TeX is a standard as well as its own future-proof implementation, permitting pixel-perfect reproduction across decades. I expect direct ports of TeX to Web Assembly not long after the standard sees adoption.
Of course, TeX is not the same thing as PDF; not even remotely. But TeX is oriented toward the world of hard copies, and I hardly see that as a fault. But even if so, it's de minimis in the grand scheme of things.
Re: A Mathematician's Apology (1940) [pdf]
#26He's incredibly ageist and cynical about man's abilities to do great things. Definitely a curmudgeon, but mixed in with some good quotes and advice. I particularly thought this was cute: "It is one of the first duties of a professor, for example, in any subject, to exaggerate a little both the importance of his subject and his own importance in it. A man who is always asking ‘Is what I do worth while?’ and ‘Am I the…
> He's incredibly ageist and cynical about man's abilities to do great things. Definitely a curmudgeon, but mixed in with some good quotes and advice.
You are just a curmudgeonist!
Re: A Mathematician's Apology (1940) [pdf]
#27He's incredibly ageist and cynical about man's abilities to do great things. Definitely a curmudgeon, but mixed in with some good quotes and advice. I particularly thought this was cute: "It is one of the first duties of a professor, for example, in any subject, to exaggerate a little both the importance of his subject and his own importance in it. A man who is always asking ‘Is what I do worth while?’ and ‘Am I the…
I really liked this book in my teens. I am not sure I would enjoy it now, a couple decades later. The ageism is part of it. His examples of mathematicians doing their best work when they were young are a little silly: who knows what great work Riemann and Galois and Ramanujan would have done had they lived longer...
Re: A Mathematician's Apology (1940) [pdf]
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like Hardy, but I dislike his ageism here too. Erdős is a good counterexample to his argument. Even Euler. Many famous mathematicians have produced good work late in their lives.
Erdos isn't a counter-example to anything. I mean I agree with you. Old people can do math. Look at Yitang Zheng. But Erdos is the exception to every rule ever.
Yitang Zhang, not Zheng.
Re: A Mathematician's Apology (1940) [pdf]
#29Is the apology for posting something that should have been HTML as a PDF?
Here it is in HTML if you prefer: http://www.math.ualberta.ca/mss/misc/A%20Mathematician's%20A...
Re: A Mathematician's Apology (1940) [pdf]
#30I did not care much for Hardys opinion about how innocent pure math was. Since it was later proved wrong by nukes. But the novella was a real glimpse into the austere life of a curmudgeon and some of the oxford culture. In addition to the culture of the elite as well, which unsurprisingly respect science and math much more than proles.
Nuclear power is a fact of nature. It simply exists. Learning this doesn't cost you any innocence; it is nature itself that has conspired to make such things possible, not humans.