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Math is still catching up to the genius of Ramanujan

quantamagazine.org

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

#281

Post by circlefavshape »

scotty79 wrote: post #262
circlefavshape wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 alt…

> Adulthood is freedom.

Freedom? That has not been my experience of adulthood. To me adulthood is about making responsible choices based on their consequences for you and the people around you ... which means that the majority of my time is spent doing things that other people need rather than because I want to do them

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

#282

Post by H4rryp0tt3r »

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'...

I wish Ramanujan's gods gave him a formula to calculate ignorance of people!

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

#283

Post by littlestymaar »

nordsieck wrote: post #12
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…

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.

It's good that schools expose children to many subjects.

It's not good at all that school reward being OK in every subject more than being really good in a handful of them. The school system is a mediocrity factory.

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

#284

Post by chongli »

ykonstant wrote: post #220
chongli wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to this I feel the need to point out that the writing skill demonstrated by the average mid-length Hacker News comment is above the level you’d need to pass grade 12 English in Ontario. It’s an extremely low bar! Of course, if English is not your first language then you’re not required to take this course. You have an alternate path which may be a lot more work for an English-language-learner but it doesn’t de…

I don't know how things work across the ocean, but here in Greece essay grading is a veritable mystery. The highest grade I ever got in a school essay was 16/20 and I had thought that was my masterpiece. Feedback always seemed cryptic (your essay contains platitudes, you are not developing your point enough etc.) and when I tried asking for specifics I got shrugs and you-still-don't-get-it groans. There are people wh…

The usual method to scoring top grades on an essay/paper is to flatter the professor. Not with literal platitudes but with a paper you think they’ll agree with, incorporating arguments similar to the ones they made in class, etc.

However, what I found is that even if the professor disagrees with your paper you’ll usually get an 80% if it’s well-written, well-researched, and well-argued. To get above that on something they disagree with requires both a highly open-minded professor and an argument they can’t find fault with.

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

#285

Post by is_true »

nordsieck wrote: post #12
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…

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.

A subject "clicking" is strongly dependent on the teacher.

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

#286

Post by joshuaissac »

The article talks about a recent paper[1] by one of the interviewees that uses McMahon partition functions for primality testing. I wonder how its running time of compares to that of the AKS primality test, and something more practical like BPSW.[2] Could it find an application in practical cryptography?

1. https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.06451v2

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baillie%E2%80%93PSW_primality_...

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

#287

Post by alok-g »

elmomle wrote: post #9
datavirtue wrote: post #2

Why aren't we working on drugs to make people smart?

I used to think like you do. But the real place where we could make tons of progress is in relationships. Many stories of great thinkers involve one or a few crucial mentoring/pedagogical relationships. Without those, a person could forever find themselves trying to fit their square peg into the round hole of what "normal" society around them seems to expect. I can easily see how my life could have ended up like that…

>> As someone who benefited greatly from a few mentors in childhood and adolescence, my goal is to be able to give the same to at least a few other people in my lifetime.

+1. Same for me.

Relationships has been more important than what I could consider ideal or optimal (in terms of how many missed opportunities are there).

Once I was reading a technical paper from a colleague and could not follow much. Spoke to him and he could explain the crux of it in two-three sentences. I was left wondering why that was not there in the paper itself. But that happens repeatedly. People are able to explain much better than the literature they produce*.

This perhaps has a contribution as to why good relationships and mentors end up being so important. But then, this ultimately comes in the way of scalability.

* Of course, it may possibly also be that in a verbal conversation when the author personally knows the reader, they can explain to that reader better. However, I think this effect is less important than people being able to write better.

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

#288

Post by boringg »

computerdl wrote: post #189
jyunwai wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The admissions process to universities in the province of Ontario in Canada has a direct solution for this, which applies to well-known universities in the global technology industry, such as the University of Toronto and the University of Waterloo. Most of these universities look at an applicant's grades for just six courses. After looking at the courses required for certain programs (such as calculus and physics fo…

Although I agree with the sentiment, the Ontario university system doesn't actually work that way. For example for Software Engineering at Waterloo, the admission average is calculated using the five required courses plus whatever your highest course is excluding the former[0]. In practice, I believe every single Ontario university program lists English one of the required courses so it will always be included in you…

And it should always be included as one of the important courses in Canada. If you can't communicate your thoughts clearly then your thoughts never really translate into the real world.

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

#289

Post by SkyBelow »

forgotoldacc wrote: post #59
Arainach wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College is not trade school. College exists not to generate people who are masters of Framework v3.0, but to generate people who can quickly learn to use whatever tool they're given and who can connect the dots to solve generic problems. Part of that is exposure to a broad range of ideas. Part of that is showing that you can learn about and deliver results on things you're not necessarily excited about.

This is true, but college general education requirements don't fulfill that role. They're classes of 250 people listening to a professor say "write this down because it'll be on the exam". Then the questions on the exam are what the professor said verbatim. My university didn't allow any classes above the most introductory ones to be considered as fulfilling the general education requirement. I signed up for a histor…

You can get exceptions. My social science degree had math requirements, but the lowest math class I took was too high level to count for them. I had to fill out a sheet of paper and submit it to the dean, but other than an hour split between talking to my academic advisor, filling out a form, and talking to the dean it wasn't a problem.

I still find it funny and informative that multivariable calculus, linear algebra, and high level math classes did not automatically fulfill the math requirement because no one ever tried to use them to satisfy it.

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

#290

Post by noisy_boy »

your_challenger wrote: post #70
esperent wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, pretty much all of the ones who are household names, are western. Well, at least to western people. Are Indians more familiar with Indian scientists?

Amoung the people who are interested in science? Yes. But to the general public? No. I don't think a non STEM guy would know Ramanujan or C V Raman.

C V Raman's name is known via school text books; though granted that few would remember it unless they carry on with STEM.
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