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Math is still catching up to the genius of Ramanujan

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

#331

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

regularfry wrote: post #328
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Feymann seems more understandable. He wanted to understand everything from first principles and derive it all himself, and spent a lifetime doing so, building himself up. He developed a huge repertoire of insights and mathematical tricks/approaches that could be brought to bear on whatever he put his mind to... It seems like he trained his mind to become what it was. The end result was of course incredible, and he would instantly or within hours see solutions to problems that colleagues had been stuck on for months.

Feynmann, like von Neumann, also seems more approachable/understandable in that he wasn't just operating at genius level, but was also a regular fun loving guy (strip clubs, bongo drums, safe hacking and all). Von Neumann and some of his Hungarian peers were famously referred to as "The Martians", but it's really Ramanujan who seems like the alien.

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

#332

Post by ngc248 »

jyunwai wrote: post #101
babyent wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm honestly no genius but I can relate to R in that one way. As a child I used to get all As and even got into a Stanford pre-collegiate program as a kid where I learned C++ and geometry. Unfortunately after a surgery in 9th grade that left me unable to attend school for 3-4 months and just terrible QOL for about a year my grades slipped (went from A+ studen to C grade student) and I basically became average. I lost…

Another student at a martial arts gym unexpectedly gave me some advice that is somewhat common, but had an impact because the words came at the right time and from the right person: he kindly told me to never judge myself based on the person that I might have been, and to instead compare myself now to how I was a month ago. I believe that any person here with an inkling of relatable technical experience can greatly a…

yep ... we are all running our own individual races ... instead of reminiscing and thinking what coulda been ... better to look forward and look at what we can do now.

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

#333

Post by hackernewds »

btree_001 wrote: post #327
kumarm wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

Not to mention Ramanujan grew up in a colonial British era, and to attribute his genius and success (instead of the oppression and difficulties) him and his environment struggled with due to British colonialism is utterly rich!

Ramanujan succeeded in spite of it, not because of the favors of the British. Imagine how many Ramanujans were ignored due to 200 years of British colonial rule in India, wherein caste system developed and thrived*

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

#334

Post by sanj »

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…

Parenting.

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

#335

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

mangodrunk wrote: post #329
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.

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.

I couldn't comment on the impact of his work, which anyways is evidentially still unfolding, but the WAY he seems to have worked is just bizarre - coming up with these deep baffling series formulae offered without proof. His mind seems to have worked in an extraordinary way.

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

#336

Post by jjmarr »

alephnerd wrote: post #311
jjmarr wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

I'm convinced good students don't need good universities as much as good universities need good students. I get the same internships and job opportunities as someone that went to UofT and I'm studying much of the same curriculum.

A degree from a good university signifies a smart and dedicated student primarily because the school selects the best students for graduation. That occurs during acceptance and by making the program difficult, causing bad students to leave.

The higher level of competitiveness is hurting the best universities during that acceptance phase. Ontario universities are no longer able to differentiate between the best and average. Waterloo is an exception because it has introduced math competitions across the province as a way to identify "A+++" students, but only Waterloo benefits from that.

I'm noticing that many Ontario schools are now ignoring the acceptance phase and focusing on the weed-out phase. UofT accepts students into a common math/CS program, then only accepts the best students into CS for second year onwards. Queen's University has a common first year for all engineering majors.

Even so, because the acceptance phase no longer differentiates, a lot of good students that would beat the second phase are caught in the first filter.

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

#337

Post by jmcqk6 »

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 there is another force at play here - the assumption that there is a platonic ideal good education system that works at every scale of population.

Attempting to scale something that large forces people into boxes that fit inside the framework - one must necessarily ignore little detailed differences between humans.

But from the perspective of those individual humans, ignoring those little details doesn't really work. Those things are important, and tend to ping our egos, so we react accordingly, and are eager for opportunities to give voice to this frustration.

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

#338

Post by alephnerd »

jjmarr wrote: post #336
alephnerd wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

I'm convinced good students don't need good universities as much as good universities need good students. I get the same internships and job opportunities as someone that went to UofT and I'm studying much of the same curriculum. A degree from a good university signifies a smart and dedicated student primarily because the school selects the best students for graduation. That occurs during acceptance and by making the…

> I'm convinced good students don't need good universities as much as good universities need good students. I get the same internships and job opportunities as someone that went to UofT and I'm studying much of the same curriculum.

In Engineering+Accounting+Actuary+Nursing I agree.

> The higher level of competitiveness is hurting the best universities during that acceptance phase. Ontario universities are no longer able to differentiate between the best and average.

Same thing in California, and that's largely because faculty hiring and infrastructure just didn't keep pace with the amount of students declaring Engineering+Accounting+Actuary+Nursing majors (Accounting+Actuary+Nursing face the same problems as STEM fields), which meant admissions need to be much more competitive because you can only teach so many students.

I assume it's a similar story in Ontario due to decades of austerity in the province.

> Even so, because the acceptance phase no longer differentiates, a lot of good students that would beat the second phase are caught in the first filter.

Yep. Because infrastructure didn't scale.

> Waterloo is an exception because it has introduced math competitions across the province as a way to identify "A+++" students, but only Waterloo benefits from that

Yep, the Euclid is basically a soft requirement now for Waterloo CS admissions.

Honestly, Ontario should just ditch "autonomous" universities and merge them under a single "University of Ontario" system and simplifying cross-system course transfers.

Ontario should also force Colleges to stop giving Bachelors degrees and convert them either into Community Colleges to transfer to a University or convert larger Colleges into Universities.

This is what Quebec does, and most state systems in the US (California, Texas, New York, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, etc).

There is no reason for UWaterloo or Wilfrid Laurier to be two different universities despite being a couple blocks away from each other.

Same for UT, UT Scarborough, York, TMU/Ryerson, etc all in GTA

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

#339

Post by 1024core »

ykrishnan wrote: post #229
kumarm wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%?

> ...only caste that is supposed to be educated... Tall claim.

People in the West love to attribute everything in India to caste.

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

#340

Post by [deleted] »

btree_001 wrote: post #327
kumarm wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

[deleted]
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