Earlier quoted context omitted.
Karpathy! Carmack!
Carmack? I love him but that can’t be a serious suggestion
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How Euler Did It, by Ed Sandifer
31–40 of 111 posts
Re: How Euler Did It, by Ed Sandifer
#32It's interesting to me that I can't think of anyone remotely comparable to Euler in the public consciousness today. Even the work of someone like Erdos seems very esoteric by comparison and also was largely done in collaboration. Was Euler just born at the right time and picking all the low hanging fruit? Or maybe his immense creative production was a unique consequence of wealth plus limited distractions? I'm inclin…
Stephen Wolfram's agent on line 2...
Re: How Euler Did It, by Ed Sandifer
#33It's interesting to me that I can't think of anyone remotely comparable to Euler in the public consciousness today. Even the work of someone like Erdos seems very esoteric by comparison and also was largely done in collaboration. Was Euler just born at the right time and picking all the low hanging fruit? Or maybe his immense creative production was a unique consequence of wealth plus limited distractions? I'm inclin…
Von Neumann is the closest comparison I can think of. A child prodigy who made a very large number of contributions to mathematics, computer science, physics, and engineering.
Re: How Euler Did It, by Ed Sandifer
#34I have read a few of these and enjoyed them greatly. Reading them you realise that Euler really did invent a huge swathe of mathematics in use today. In particular I read this one: http://eulerarchive.maa.org/hedi/HEDI-2009-02.pdf And I realised that Euler had found two formulae for Pi which can be used to calculate any hex digit of Pi. I wrote this up in a paper: "In 1779 Euler discovered two formulas for π which ca…
Yet I struggle to adjust to one note taking app to optimize my workflow. The paradoxal curse of choice.
Re: How Euler Did It, by Ed Sandifer
#35It's interesting to me that I can't think of anyone remotely comparable to Euler in the public consciousness today. Even the work of someone like Erdos seems very esoteric by comparison and also was largely done in collaboration. Was Euler just born at the right time and picking all the low hanging fruit? Or maybe his immense creative production was a unique consequence of wealth plus limited distractions? I'm inclin…
Is Euler really well known in public? Einstein is way more well known than Euler, I'd guess. Even if you will ask most famous mathematician, it is unlikely that he is named. Probably Pythagoras. I have no data to back it up.
Most people can't name any mathematicians, but amongst those that can I think he's top 5, behind more famous names like Newton, Archimedes and Euclid
Re: How Euler Did It, by Ed Sandifer
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
I always stress how our public education is broken since it can't handle extreme talent very good. Important breakthroughs that advance one or more fields extremely or shifting paradigms completely, were done or prepared by whizzkids. In these times, we need every whizzkid we can get.
Let's hope education indivualizes to the need and talents of the individual partially via software. ChatGPT is my hope here. 15% failure rate is optimal for learning https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12552-4
Seriously? Oh god, please no. We need less of all that BS. People are thinking that are being "tutored" by AI, when in fact is just the output of a number crunching program. Reading books will get you way way closer to solid knowledge than the output crap of this so called "AI".
Re: How Euler Did It, by Ed Sandifer
#37It's interesting to me that I can't think of anyone remotely comparable to Euler in the public consciousness today. Even the work of someone like Erdos seems very esoteric by comparison and also was largely done in collaboration. Was Euler just born at the right time and picking all the low hanging fruit? Or maybe his immense creative production was a unique consequence of wealth plus limited distractions? I'm inclin…
Maybe today's emphasis on "well rounded" education is a distraction from specialized talents.
Euler did his master’s dissertation on the philosophies of Descartes and Newton. He then joined the faculty at University of Basel in theology. I think this is ample evidence that he received a well-rounded education.
Re: How Euler Did It, by Ed Sandifer
#38Is it possible that these prolific geniuses had smart people working for (or with) them, while taking most credit? I could imagine that in 300 years time people think that Elon Musk single-handedly invented the Turing machine, at the age of 16, during a weekend, while reading Hacker News. How would one go about disproving such an hypothesis? I've had similar doubts about Leonardo da Vinci, but I'm afraid Euler was ac…
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Re: How Euler Did It, by Ed Sandifer
#39Euler went blind in one eye, and remarked "now I will have fewer distractions". He eventually became almost blind entirely, but with the aid of scribes, his productivity actually increased. It's remarkable how Euler didn't let being blind hinder him. A truly astounding mathematical career.
Re: How Euler Did It, by Ed Sandifer
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is Euler really well known in public? Einstein is way more well known than Euler, I'd guess. Even if you will ask most famous mathematician, it is unlikely that he is named. Probably Pythagoras. I have no data to back it up.
Most people can't name any mathematicians, but amongst those that can I think he's top 5, behind more famous names like Newton, Archimedes and Euclid
And Gauss.