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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

#311

Post by alephnerd »

jjmarr wrote: post #305
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…

In 2024 you are not getting into Waterloo CS with anything less than a 99% in your top6. And that's the entry level. If you really want to get in, you have to grind math competitions, clubs, etc. I go to a mid-tier university (Toronto Metropolitan University) and the admissions average for CS was 97% last year. The admissions process for universities in Ontario is a joke at this point. Imagine if students going to Ha…

This is the same reason why STEM admission became so competitive in UCs in California.

UCs historically admitted using a mix of class rank, GPA, and test scores, but the number of seats at UCs didn't really increase in the past decade+ despite a small baby boom in the 2000s, and the growing prominence of STEM in the 2010s, so the average GPAs and SAT scores for UC admissions skyrocketed.

Plenty of Californians have anecdotes of getting rejected from mid-tier UCs but getting into MIT or Stanford. It's had a downstream impact out-of-state as well, as plenty of Californians now attend out-of-state STEM programs for that reason (played a major role in upleveling UT Austin/UW/UIUC/GT/UW Madison's reputations among STEM-targeting HSers ime) and make STEM admissions harder in out-of-state colleges as well.

That said, education quality for STEM majors is consistent across all UCs so the UC you go to doesn't matter as much academic quality wise.

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

#312

Post by [deleted] »

kumarm wrote: post #159
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.

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%?

[deleted]

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

#313

Post by xenophonf »

hnfong wrote: post #47
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.

> Part of that is showing that you can learn about and deliver results on things you're not necessarily excited about. Why is that useful besides for the employer trying to impose Framework v3.0 onto their subjects? To me at least, learning things one is not excited about is only useful to capitalist society that views human beings as replaceable resources.

I wasn't particularly excited to learn philosophy or economics, but that gave me the foundation to understand Marx and Engels. Learning "things you're not necessarily excited about" makes you well-rounded. That's a _good thing_.

Let's use another example. Communicating with other people is a very important part of my job as a software engineer. I'd say that at this point in my career, writing good proposals, documentation, project charters, task orders, change requests, etc. is vital to my individual and collective success, so I'm glad I was taught lots of rhetoric and literature and writing and all that artsy stuff my younger self spent too much time disdaining.

Or another example. I have written precisely zero lines of Lisp or ML for work, and I flunked the first computer science class I took that used Lisp (good old _Essentials of Programming Languages_). And yet I use the concepts I learned in those classes _all the time_. Heck, I was just talking about side effects the other day in the context of 21 CFR Part 11 computer system validation.

My last metaphor. Brushing one's teeth or taking a shower isn't particularly exciting, but that kind of routine maintenance work is a vital part of your physical health. So it goes for mental exercise. Reading something challenging, learning the work's historical context, and writing a critical response well all helps keep you mentally healthy. That's good no matter what socioeconomic system you live in.

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

#314

Post by amunozo »

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…

Exposing students to other subjects is what make them discover what they like. I think the optimal balance would be studying a wide number of subjects, but being able to select for an even larger set.

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

#315

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #309
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People like Ramanujan are on a different planet compared to your everyday PhD working stiffs. There's smart (PhD), there's genius (Einstein, Feynman, von Neumann), and then there are freaks of nature like Ramanujan.

I'm an atheist, but why not take Ramanujan at his word when he says that god(s) gives him his equations? I for one would ask him what we could do to make it easier for him to listen to the voice of god(s) rather than say "well akshually..."

Well, he's dead, so there's that ...

I'm not sure there's much you can do to help someone at this level, other than perhaps take away outside distractions.

It's not remotely clear how Ramanujan's mind worked, or whether he really knew himself. He seems to have been a lot more highly functioning than an idiot savant, but still operating at a level that is hard to comprehend. Was this an expression of humility or devotion by Ramanujan, or was he just expressing his own lack of understanding of how his mind worked?

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

#316

Post by shombaboor »

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.

exposure and opportunity means so much in professional life. There's a lot of value out there but someone has to find and promote it.

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

#317

Post by cubefox »

gen_greyface wrote: post #292
cubefox wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I fail to see why this is being pointed out? > People from a higher caste tend to have higher IQ, >> People from a higher caste tend to have better access to resources, also a >Mankind Quarterly, a known fringe Far-right Racist publication. for fellow readers see [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mankind_Quarterly

[flagged]

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

#318

Post by seanhunter »

dyauspitr wrote: post #7

Ramanujan’s story is very interesting but I would love more Indian mathematicians and scientists to become household names. Mathematicians like Harish Chandra, C. R. Rao, Manjul Bhargava, Narendra Karmakar etc. Physicists like C. V. Raman, Satyendra Nath Bose, Meghnad Saha. Others like Har Gobind Khorana and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan too.

What about Madhava of Sangamagrama[1], who (among other things) described various Taylor expansions for trigonometric functions (including an estimate of the error term) in the 14th century? (ie 300 years before James Gregory discovered the method for the Taylor expansion in the West).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madhava_of_Sangamagrama

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

#319

Post by datavirtue »

willy_k wrote: post #149
xanderlewis wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Source'.

Well assuming we’re talking about Elon Musk, he has admitted to using prescription Ketamine for depression, which seems to have a negligible effect on cognition for therapeutic use

Interesting, I have seen some pretty scary interviews with Elon. If I had noticed a family member acting the same way I would have taken them to the ER.

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

#320

Post by BobaFloutist »

sealeck wrote: post #247
fragmede wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I think they're talking about specifically the Unabomber, who was known to be a math genius too.
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