I wish we lived in the multiverse where he didn’t die. Imagine what he could have done. Cool article though.
At least we don't live in the multiverse where he was never discovered and all his work was thrown away.
True very true.
Math is still catching up to the genius of Ramanujan
261–270 of 447 posts
Re: Math is still catching up to the genius of Ramanujan
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 fract…
> making me read things I didn't want to read and writing things I didn't want to write How to do things you don't want to do is a fundamental requirement for adulthood, and probably the most important skill anyone learns in school
I absolutely disagree. Adulthood is freedom. It's when you decide what you choose to do. Sometimes things feel like you have to do them but that's just remnants of the conditioning you were moulded by as a child. When you are pressed to the wall you are eventually forced to understand that you don't really have to do them, you just choose to, because however hard they may be it's easier for you than the available alternative. You don't have that level of agency as a child when you are constantly exposed to indoctrination from everybody more powerful than you (which at this stage is pretty much everybody).
Re: Math is still catching up to the genius of Ramanujan
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
IGCSEs per se are a lot more flexible about that. You can do any subjects in any combination you like. Its a decision by the school to make English literature compulsory. Home educated kids often do not do it, on the other hand there are are huge number of subjects they can pick from: https://he-exams.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Subjects
British universities do often (usually?) require English language (or an equivalent) and maths (I)GCSEs, as do British employers and further education colleges etc. so its a really bad idea to skip those.
I do think its good to give kids a broad education, and for some it would be good to continue that for longer. For others (like you) its just boring.
I also think there should be more opportunities for adult education, so if you decide later in life that you would like to learn about English literature or physics or whatever you should have a chance to do it. AT the moment in the UK things seem to be going the other way, with an over expansion of universities sucking up money, and further education colleges that used to offer adult education putting the resources into "16 to 18" courses.
Re: Math is still catching up to the genius of Ramanujan
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
So in grade 5 you maths is A++++ (like college entry level), you're excused from English, Civics and what not, and when by the time of graduation you've fizzled out (which most prodigies do) you're just an unemployable nerd. School education standards are the barest minimum and anyone of IQ > 85 can make them.
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.
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Re: Math is still catching up to the genius of Ramanujan
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMO, you're thinking about this backwards. It's good that public school exposes children to many subjects - hopefully most of them. So that they can discover if they click with one of them. The real danger is that someone never gets exposed to a subject at all. College is the place to specialize in a subject.
Exposure is good, but success in school requires you to be successful in these subjects as well. I have had similar thoughts recently as OP thinking about what I want for my young kids and what my experiences in school were. Being _really_ good in one thing should allow you to make up for being subpar in other areas, but it doesn't. You can only get an A (or A+) in math for example, even if your a genius. But maybe y…
>but success in school requires you to be successful in these subjects as well
It doesnt, at least in my country.
Here you have a few school leaving exams that you need to perform at
Math, native lang and english.
And one at advanced level, but its your choice when it comes to subject.
What you are talking about is GPA and GPA is meaningless tbf
Re: Math is still catching up to the genius of Ramanujan
#266In 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 a kind heart!
Re: Math is still catching up to the genius of Ramanujan
#267That 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…
> But what if those just aren’t interesting to someone?
That doesn't matter. A student is unable to evaluate the value of unknown subjects and the synergy between subjects. People are often unmotivated to do important things, because we are just lazy s**.
> I wonder how many geniuses we skip on because doing the chores of homework and getting through boring classes is busywork and memorization for the sake of getting an A.
And how many lunatics making wrong decisions did we prevented by forcing them to learn necessary things?
> Meanwhile, hardly anyone actually remembers anything about those topics
They are engraved in your mind. Even when you don't remember every little detail, they still helped you in forming your understanding of the world.
Re: Math is still catching up to the genius of Ramanujan
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
> and do so with relative competency I dispute this on the grounds that students are going through American schools and many of them don't even know how to read.
92% of adults know how to read to varying level.[1] The number, while high, is not satisfactory. Clearly, we also want adults to be functionally and not pass a super low bar of being able to read a sentence which 92% does not care to distinguish, but it is not fact true that "many of them don't even know how to read". 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States
In terms of not being able to read, I would count 8% as "many"? Select a group of ten random Americans and you'd expect one of them to be illiterate - that's appalling.
Re: Math is still catching up to the genius of Ramanujan
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
> then in Grade 12, there's Advanced (!) Functions." Then in university, there’s Elementary Functional Analysis!
The first math course as math major in university involved proving that a+b=b+a and that a+(b+c)=(a+b)+c. It's quite fun to go from 'advanced' calculus during the final classes of high school, to "OK, let's consider the expression 1+1=2. What does it actually mean and why is it true?"
> The first math course as math major in university involved proving that a+b=b+a and that a+(b+c)=(a+b)+c.
Really? What were the axioms?
Re: Math is still catching up to the genius of Ramanujan
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMO, you're thinking about this backwards. It's good that public school exposes children to many subjects - hopefully most of them. So that they can discover if they click with one of them. The real danger is that someone never gets exposed to a subject at all. College is the place to specialize in a subject.
Exposure is good, but success in school requires you to be successful in these subjects as well. I have had similar thoughts recently as OP thinking about what I want for my young kids and what my experiences in school were. Being _really_ good in one thing should allow you to make up for being subpar in other areas, but it doesn't. You can only get an A (or A+) in math for example, even if your a genius. But maybe y…
That’s irrelevant to 99.99% of people. An A in math is not especially difficult to achieve.
To actually be meaningfully better at math you need to go far, far further than the coursework presented in schools, at which point it becomes an extra curricular which is already considered. If you’re a math savant proving novel theorems, they will notice that.
But nobody gives a shit if you’re just really, really good at factoring polynomials from Algebra 2 tests.