271–280 of 447 posts
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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?
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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.
I think that if you tried you could imagine a world where Ramanujans are both supported and respected with nice lives, while also contributing to the future of the species rather than helping dig our own grave.
> The other version in the West is he moves to rural Montana and sends bombs through the mail.
Why in the world would those be the only two options?? What a profoundly strange thing to say.
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…
> 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. Zero? If you qualify as a prodigy, it is apparent from a young age. Maths prodigies are especially easy to distinguish. Given a little time, they will self-learn, grok and innovate on anything you throw at them and will likely attend higher educatio…
There are children with exceptional mental abilities in a limited range of topics or even a single topic, such as math, music or drawing, They may struggle to various degrees with subjects or life skills that don't correspond closely with their specific topics of interest and ability.
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Well, my solution would be this: Instead of giving kids grades with a ceiling, each subject would have (unlimited number of) levels of proficiency, and to attain a level, kids would have to pass a test (demonstrate certain skill). The choice of subjects and levels to attain would be up to each kid, but they would have to choose to do something (working at getting next level of something would be mandatory). (Although…
>Also, I would group kids by subject, and not by age. I would be cautious with this, they may have the same academic ability but a large gap in social skills.
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If you want to understand how human potential was wasted in old world, Ramanujan belongs to a caste in India that is only caste that is supposed to be educated (Representing probably Ramanujan short life itself is a loss to the world, Imagine how many Ramanujan's were ignored where there is no G.H. Hardy and what about Ramanujans in the other 95%?
caste system in india is an evil that persists even today, and is a complex topic. majority of the indian-origin users on hackernews or people in the IT community are very likely upper castes. see [1] If you are interested to learn more about the caste system in india it is recommended to get your facts from multiple sources. start from [2] [1] https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674987883 [2] https://en.wikipedia.…
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https://www.defenddemocracy.press/ukraines-nazis-who-are-the...
Except the groups the article refers to are quite marginal, have no influence in government, are a certainly not "great friends of the Western establishment". Basically a propaganda piece, designed to push your buttons. And not surprisingly, published originally in RT.
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https://www.defenddemocracy.press/ukraines-nazis-who-are-the...
What a piece of Russian-funded propaganda. That is funny how russians claim everyone of their enemy is a Nazi. While real white supremacists with swastika tattoos are fighting in the Russian side, just to have an opportunity to make money while doing atrocities.
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> College is the place to specialize in a subject. In Europe maybe, but in America a lot of students receive their general purpose liberal arts education in College, and will then specialize later with a post graduate degree.
So what is high school for? Also does the above apply also to the most selective and renowned institutions, or only to community colleges?
I'd say applies to most colleges, of any size. Community colleges tend to be more like trade schools
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Basically the Peano axioms
How did that proof work for rational numbers?
As I said it was literally one of the first math courses we did, so it wasn't super rigorous with all the technical and logical details.