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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

#321

Post by heresie-dabord »

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…

> every extraordinary person [was] 1 step away from being forgotten, and got some huge universal break

Being a genius is a phenomenon of the individual, but being able to pursue one's talent is a social aspect of the phenomenon of civilisation.

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

#322

Post by burkaman »

sourcepluck wrote: post #306

This thread is a good example of one of the perhaps overlooked reasons it can be hard to discuss education in our societies - any attempt at making a general point, or a meta-observation of some kind, quickly gets swallowed in a massive influx of personal anecdotes about things that happened to people during their education. Maybe there are other topics where the same phemonen exists. I'm not sure if off the top of m…

I think it's just because every single person here has at least a decade of personal experience in education. One of the things many people like about HN is that when an article about some obscure subject is posted, there is often someone in the comments with personal experience who can share a story. Education is one of the few subjects where we can all be that person.

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

#323

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#324

Post by BobaFloutist »

scotty79 wrote: post #259
elgenie wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ramanujan himself survived childhood smallpox and died at just 32 from what's thought to be complications from an earlier bout with dysentery. But he had lucked out in that he was born male in an urban setting in a high caste, with access to education, textbooks, and the language of the imperial core, and managed to make it to adulthood at all. “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstei…

If we individual makeup was so irrelevant we wouldn't have just had me Ramanujan so far. Although I agree that Einstein is probably very unremarkable and was mostly the right (genius) person in the right place at the right time in history of science to marry together things other people figured out and sprinkle some unique framing onto that.

It's not that individual makeup is so irrelevant, it's that if we assume (potential) Einsteins and Ramanujans follow a normal distribution (or really any random distribution), then the fact that so many people in the world live in situations where any genius will simply never be noticed means we are necessarily missing out on the vast majority of them.

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

#325

Post by cassepipe »

sourcepluck wrote: post #306

This thread is a good example of one of the perhaps overlooked reasons it can be hard to discuss education in our societies - any attempt at making a general point, or a meta-observation of some kind, quickly gets swallowed in a massive influx of personal anecdotes about things that happened to people during their education. Maybe there are other topics where the same phemonen exists. I'm not sure if off the top of m…

My guess would be it's because it's an experience (most of us) have in common in years full of first times. It's also an experience that took as least as much space in our life than work now does. It's also a place where we had to deal authority and groups. So whenever you make any point about education, if the point you are making seems to negate/go against the grain of my own experience, I will probably tell you :)

(Venting is a need that everyone has when under pressure not sure it has anything to do with our education structures)

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

#326

Post by rramadass »

kadal wrote: post #253
rramadass wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is entirely the fault of the Indian Education System and Popular Media. The current generation knows almost nothing about these Indian Greats. In order to rectify the status quo; 1) Everybody should get the monthly magazine Science Reporter published by National Institute of Science Communication and Policy Research (NIScPR), Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), New Delhi, India. which gives a o…

To this excellent list, I would humbly add Bhavana: https://bhavana.org.in/

Great; I didn't know of this Mathematics magazine.

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

#327

Post by btree_001 »

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%?

[dead]

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

#328

Post by regularfry »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #315
Der_Einzige wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 devot…

There's a parallel there to Feynman, if you squint a bit. He seems to have been synaesthetic in a way that let him use the sensory part of his brain as a maths coprocessor, and he didn't understand it himself.

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

#329

Post by mangodrunk »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #302
maeil wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Ramanujan is obviously very gifted and was able to do exceptionally well given his circumstances, but to put him higher than those that you listed is wrong to me. There are many more mathematicians who solved problems that have more impact and those that started new branches of math. Ramanujan is overrated in my opinion.

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

#330

Post by [deleted] »

geodel wrote: post #119
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…

> People like R would be lost in the sea of averages because their genius would be kept shut by norms. Well norms were in place when R did his work. Even the most strict systems have made concessions for extraordinary people. It is just that mostly average people go around claiming they'd be genius, had system not smothered their creativity. > I wonder how many geniuses we skip on because doing the chores of homework…

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