Live data from Hacker News

Math from Three to Seven

thepsmiths.com

21–30 of 225 posts

Re: Math from Three to Seven

#21

I think this must be a very stupid question, but I’ll ask it anyway. I always thought the Soviet Union was smaller than the US population wise, and really did punch above their weight. But Soviet Union census of 1970 lists 241,720,134 people, while the US census of 1970 lists 203,392,031 people. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_Soviet_census https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_United_States_census Is this statis…

The OP is wrong. The USSR had a larger population than the US by around 20% from 1950 to 1990: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000380594.pdf

Chances are he's only counting the population of Russia proper, which would be a bit like only counting the US East Coast population.

Re: Math from Three to Seven

#22

The USSR was indeed the most reading country in the world. Soviet citizens spent approx. 11 hours a week reading books, newspapers and journals on average, which was twice more as the British, North Americans and French people did. It was the findings of the world study of 1966.

Yes, people had a lot of time for hobbies. Reading, writing poems, electronics. Sometimes I watch old interviews of people on the streets and compare with the interviews they do on the streets now. It's night and day. Even people, like working class, drunk in a bar in the end of 80's collapse were more well spoken and intelligent then the people now. Either it's Putin, emigration or capitalism or whatever but there is a serious degradation in the populace.

Re: Math from Three to Seven

#23
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

They invented space ships, for one thing. Russian was a scientific power in the 19th Century before Soviet Union, and continued during the Soviet era. The west had limited access to it, due to the Cold War. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_technology_in_Ru...

Soviet Union wasn't called a superpower for nothing. USSR had many world class achievements in scientific and applied areas, and some organizational achievements in social and manufacturing areas. There are examples and counterexamples, but the result is what we have, and while at some areas ex-Soviets were seen as backwards people in early 1990-s, in some others they really brought some positive advancements to the West - or First World - when the borders became open.

Re: Math from Three to Seven

#24
post #21

I think this must be a very stupid question, but I’ll ask it anyway. I always thought the Soviet Union was smaller than the US population wise, and really did punch above their weight. But Soviet Union census of 1970 lists 241,720,134 people, while the US census of 1970 lists 203,392,031 people. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_Soviet_census https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_United_States_census Is this statis…

The OP is wrong. The USSR had a larger population than the US by around 20% from 1950 to 1990: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000380594.pdf Chances are he's only counting the population of Russia proper, which would be a bit like only counting the US East Coast population.

My guess is rather that he's conflating the US with US + Western Europe.

Re: Math from Three to Seven

#26
From the book being reviewed:

> All joking aside, we fledgling mathematicians understood that the single most important thing was not raw intelligence or knowledge (Americans tend to lag behind in the latter compared to all international students). What mattered was passion. The way to become successful in mathematics, like almost every endeavor, is to care about it, to love it, to obsess over it. And in this, Eastern Europeans had a clear superiority, a cultural advantage. They had been trained, from an early age, to love mathematics more intensely.

IMHO this is what drove American superiority in software engineering for several decades. The people who self selected into software engineering really loved the field.

I suspect we'll see a continuous slow decrease in all aspects of quality of software as those who have a genuine love and passion for the field are replaced by those in it just for the money.

Re: Math from Three to Seven

#27
post #23
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They invented space ships, for one thing. Russian was a scientific power in the 19th Century before Soviet Union, and continued during the Soviet era. The west had limited access to it, due to the Cold War. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_technology_in_Ru...

Soviet Union wasn't called a superpower for nothing. USSR had many world class achievements in scientific and applied areas, and some organizational achievements in social and manufacturing areas. There are examples and counterexamples, but the result is what we have, and while at some areas ex-Soviets were seen as backwards people in early 1990-s, in some others they really brought some positive advancements to the…

Case in point: The reason why the US heavily relied on Soviet rocket engines for their launches for ~15 years (before SpaceX dominance) was because they were simply more advanced and cost effective. Material science apparently was a step above - Soviet scientists were able to create an alloy for use in oxygen-rich engines which was unbelievable to Western counterparts till they visited and had it demonstrated.

Re: Math from Three to Seven

#28
When my kid was three I encountered this lovely book and thought I'd read it to attempt to replicate something like it (despite all the warnings that it's a journal and not a guide); unfortunately I never got around to finishing the book (nothing against the book, just got distracted) and now the kid's already past seven :) But what little I read was delightful; thanks for posting this summary!

Re: Math from Three to Seven

#29
post #2

The author raises an interesting question as to how the Soviets produced so much scientific talent, but his discussion of math circles strikes me as more of a tangent than a convincing answer. Were these math circles really so widespread, and were they a big part of producing mathematical and scientific question? He doesn't address this. However, the book he is reviewing is available online [1] and I see from skimmin…

[flagged]

Quantify in my opinion requires qualify because, how many is "a lot?" But broad strokes, the USSR was an intellectual powerhouse. Add as many "in spite of"'s as you like, but in my opinion the "a lot" target is achieved. You mention science and I'll get to that, but I want to first target what I feel is a general misconception of the Soviet Union as like, a bleak concrete-ridden, muddy backwater of labor camps (it kinda was of course) with nothing to contribute to the world.

Post revolutionary periods always produce fantastic art, literature, and social experiments. See post-revolutionary American religious scene for an example. In the Soviet Union, there's a clumping of great literature around 1917. Summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_literature#Early_post-...

> The Imaginists were post-Revolution poetic movement, similar to English-language Imagists, that created poetry based on sequences of arresting and uncommon images. The major figures include Sergei Yesenin, Anatoly Marienhof, and Rurik Ivnev.[65] Another important movement was the Oberiu (1927–1930s), which included the most famous Russian absurdist Daniil Kharms (1905–1942), Konstantin Vaginov (1899–1934), Alexander Vvedensky (1904–1941) and Nikolay Zabolotsky (1903–1958).[66][67] Other famous authors experimenting with language included the novelists Boris Pilnyak (1894–1938), Yuri Olesha (1899–1960), Andrei Platonov (1899–1951) and Artyom Vesyoly (1899–1938), the short-story writers Isaak Babel (1894–1940) and Mikhail Zoshchenko (1894–1958).

Sorry for the big copy paste, but, there's just so many of them, and to literature nerds, what they did was "groundbreaking." I know it sounds silly but let us literature nerds have our thing.

Then there's a bunch of fun leftist / communist poetry, from Vladimir Mayakovsky and Nikolai Tikhonov (the "Could nails from such people be fashioned" guy).

And on and on. Art had some interesting characters as well, "in spite of" the Socialist Realism thing. Isaak Brodsky, for example.

Re: science, as someone else linked, efforts were hampered slightly by the repression of science that was perceived as in opposition to dialectical materialism, but in general the Soviet Union seemed very determined to create a lot of engineers.

You have Fields medal winners: Grigory Margulis (interestingly he suffered from the Soviet antisemitism mentioned in this article), Vladimir Drinfeld, and Sergei Novikov. And you have nobel prize winners such as Nikolay Semenov, Nikolay Basov + Alexander Prokhorov, Pavel Cherenkov (the Cherenkov radiation guy) + Ilya Frank + Igor Tamm, Leonid Kantorovich (basically invented linear programming), Pyotr Kapitsa, and Lev Landau.

Then there's the obvious such as the fact that the Soviets were first to put a satellite in orbit, first to put a human in orbit (arguably far more useful than putting a human on the moon, though putting a human on the moon is probably more inspiring).

What is interesting is how during the time these may not be "contributions to science" due to the USA and the Soviet Union often not sharing advancements in science with eachother because of the Cold War. Imagine if the two nations had been cooperating with eachother. Then again maybe there wouldn't have been a "Space Race."

Re: Math from Three to Seven

#30
post #26

From the book being reviewed: > All joking aside, we fledgling mathematicians understood that the single most important thing was not raw intelligence or knowledge (Americans tend to lag behind in the latter compared to all international students). What mattered was passion. The way to become successful in mathematics, like almost every endeavor, is to care about it, to love it, to obsess over it. And in this, Easter…

Good example of passion from early bell Labs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc4ROCJYbm0

Other examples I can think of (from my Gen Z experience, growing up in SoCal):

- Elementary school: Making custom action replay codes, hacking game saves with programs, CheatEngine/memory/hex editor and following YouTube tutorials, Javascript "document.contentEditable=true" hack and changing stuff on websites, pressing F12 and changing random javascript code until something interesting happens or breaks.

- Middle school: making sites on Weebly/freewebs, embedding chats and flash games on them, sharing them during computer class

- High school: Making PHP sites/vbulliten/Newgrounds/flash games, later iOS apps

I wasn't the only one doing these things. There were always like 3 other kids like me in any classroom that would do the same things.

Most of us ended up becoming passionate SWEs, besides one that became an accountant.

Post reply on HN