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Math is still catching up to the genius of Ramanujan

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Re: Math is still catching up to the genius of Ramanujan

#241

Post by ken47 »

babyent wrote: post #5

That was a fun read. What really stuck out to me was how R failed in a bunch of other subjects except math because he wasn’t interested in them. I know society and norms expect students to learn all these other subjects. But what if those just aren’t interesting to someone? I wonder how many geniuses we skip on because doing the chores of homework and getting through boring classes is busywork and memorization for th…

You’re absolutely right. The education system was meant to be a factory of production line workers, at the cost of missing out on geniuses who don’t care about other subjects.

This system is meant for a worker that no longer exists. If someone wants to specialize at the age of 13 and has shown reasonable aptitude in that subject, then let them do it. Sure, give them a well rounded education, but don’t weight those grades anywhere close to equally.

Re: Math is still catching up to the genius of Ramanujan

#242

Post by rammer »

monacobolid wrote: post #197

> he came up with thousands of elegant and surprising results, often without proof. He was fond of saying that his equations had been bestowed on him by the gods And somehow this guy is remembered as a 'genius'...

Obviously someone's burning

Re: Math is still catching up to the genius of Ramanujan

#243

Post by richrichie »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #193
atoav wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few points on this: - How and when would you know a subject doesn't click? In my case German (my first language) and English sucked for roughly 8 years. I ended school with A in both and was the only student in my school without a single mistake in my exam. - School gives you good grades if you managed to learn the topics at hand. Being able to learn what is needed or what you are bad at — not what you want and are…

I mean, just as a counter-note: I utterly hated every second of a multitude of subjects, and indeed now I am 37 and I never needed them and was entirely correct about what I would require later.

Hindsight bias?

Re: Math is still catching up to the genius of Ramanujan

#244

Post by sensanaty »

dagw wrote: post #218
graemep wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is an advantage of the British system. You have a wide education until 16 and sit a broad range of exams at that age (GCSEs) and then specialise in a few (most often three) subjects from 16 to 18. You usually need to pass English and maths GCSEs, but universities mostly care about the subjects you do in the last two years (except for very competitive courses). This can be a problem for those who want to keep opt…

As someone who did my GCSE's but then moved abroad before my A Levels and ended up taking the International Baccalaureate, I'm in hindsight really glad I didn't do A Levels. Had I stayed in England I would have studied just maths, physics and chemistry. Being forced by the IB program to also study english, philosophy and economics really expanded my horizons and has been huge boon to me in my life and I'm really happ…

I did IGCSE's (the international version as I lived in Indonesia) and AS/A levels myself, while a lot of my friends who went to a different school did IB and I generally disagree. My most hated school years were the IGCSE times, exactly because I was forced into learning about crap I didn't care about in the slightest, like English Literature when all I wanted to do was the various sciences and especially mathematics.

I feel like the IGCSE times were more than enough exposure to those other subjects to give me a reasonably well-rounded image of those subjects. Now, a decade later, I'm definitely glad I went the STEM route rather than ever touching on any humanities subjects in any amount of detail.

Re: Math is still catching up to the genius of Ramanujan

#245

Post by wruza »

chandureddyvari wrote: post #103
IAmGraydon wrote: post #75

The stories of mathematicians like Srinivasa Ramanujan, who claimed to have derived complex partitions and identities in dreams, have always captivated me. It's as if their minds were tapping into some hidden reservoir of knowledge. I'm curious what drives these intuitive leaps. Was Ramanujan's brain quietly processing patterns during sleep, leveraging its default mode network in ways we're still struggling to unders…

There’s a relevant quote from Swami Vivekananda on this From Karma Yoga, Chapter: I, Karma in its effect on character— What we say a man “knows”, should, in strict psychological language, be what he “discovers” or “unveils”; what a man “learns” is really what he “discovers”, by taking the cover off his own soul, which is a mine of infinite knowledge. We say Newton discovered gravitation. Was it sitting anywhere in a…

Not sure I follow the explanation. And apologies cause I’m not that familiar with these texts, but afaik it talks about “soul” here, not information? Words like Brahman, Atman come to mind.

In case I mistook it, ignore the above.

All knowledge that the world has ever received comes from the mind

Doesn’t it come from the mind’s interaction with the world? I don’t think that any important knowledge comes from doing nothing (apart from psychology due to its nature). It all sounds like a typical religious salad, tbh. “You” discover from your “mind”, but then some seers understand that “you” and “all” and “mind” are the same, etc. Well, you don’t have to be a seer to see it. “You discover from your mind” is a useless semantic loop that creates all this unnecessary complexity, imo.

Re: Math is still catching up to the genius of Ramanujan

#246

Post by scotty79 »

dagw wrote: post #222
ChadNauseam wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I can’t say I learned anything professionally useful in english or civics. An actually decent math class in just one of my years of k-12 would have been much more useful.

I learned anything professionally useful in English Even as someone who went full 'STEM' for both my education and career, English is probably among the most professionally useful courses I did in high school. A surprisingly large part of my job involves reading things, understanding them, and then writing a clear and reasoned response to them, all skills I first learned and really got to practice in English class.

Reading and writing is a huge part of software development. But I didn't learn these skills at school. If anything, school soured them for me, by making me read things I didn't want to read and writing things I didn't want to write. School should let you read what you want. Today that you read it could be checked with AI prepared quiz. And writing should be mostly focused on communication not essays. Very small fraction of people ends up getting significant utility writing their ramblings into the void.

Re: Math is still catching up to the genius of Ramanujan

#247

Post by sealeck »

fragmede wrote: post #178
maeil wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the New World, the Ramanujans' lives are spent optimizing high-frequency trading, ads or video recommendation algorithms. This is arguably even worse for society than them not being discovered altogethrt.

Arguably. Assuming that's actually where they end up, they earn lots of money and they get to choose what they want to do with it. We should force them to be mathematicians if they didn't want to be? The other version in the West is he moves to rural Montana and sends bombs through the mail.

> The other version in the West is he moves to rural Montana and sends bombs through the mail.

There might be a middle ground between the two?

Re: Math is still catching up to the genius of Ramanujan

#248

Post by de_elusive »

babyent wrote: post #5

That was a fun read. What really stuck out to me was how R failed in a bunch of other subjects except math because he wasn’t interested in them. I know society and norms expect students to learn all these other subjects. But what if those just aren’t interesting to someone? I wonder how many geniuses we skip on because doing the chores of homework and getting through boring classes is busywork and memorization for th…

School is for training good test-takers, not finding geniuses.

Re: Math is still catching up to the genius of Ramanujan

#249

Post by scotty79 »

tallanvor wrote: post #232
nordsieck wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's weird to say that about English when good communication is essential for success in any engineering field Some of what's taught in English classes is about clear communication, and some of it isn't. I think learning the 5 paragraph essay structure was very useful. But that's maybe 3 months worth of learning. The rest was English major stuff. Which is fine, but please don't pretend that it has a lot to do with…

This is a very immature take. Of course you can BELIEVE that English classes didn't help you learn how to read and write more effectively or how to better understand what was left unsaid or unwritten, but believing something doesn't make it so. And yes, as a student reading the classics often sucks. After all, you're not reading them for pleasure - you're reading them to learn how to identify and discuss their themes…

It's very impolite to label lived experience of another educated and probably somewhat accomplished adult as immature.

At 45 years old I can confidently say that anything I've "learned" on my native language classes through 12 years of having them was totally useless garbage and I'm using none of it in my writing, reading and culturural appreciation or understanding of the world. Everything I use was self-acquired in the time I had that was not spent in native language classes. Ideas of education are great, but the implementation is terrible to the point of being useless.

On the other hand math, physics and chemistry I learned at school has been immensely practically and culturally useful and I wouldn't know a fraction of it if I wasn't taught it in school.

Re: Math is still catching up to the genius of Ramanujan

#250

Post by non_low_key »

profsummergig wrote: post #35

In the Ramanujan story, a true MVP is G.H. Hardy. He read letters from some random unknown guy (a savage "native" no less!) half the world away, and took them seriously. And then organized resources to have that guy travel to England. A true MVP. All the others Ramanujan wrote to ignored him (understandably so). Such a tragedy that he died so young.

What do you mean by savage "native" here ? He is coming from a culture of long and rich intellectual history.
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