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Mitchell Feigenbaum (1944–2019), 4.66920160910299067185320382…

blog.stephenwolfram.com

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Re: Mitchell Feigenbaum (1944–2019), 4.66920160910299067185320382…

#51

Post by qserasera »

1000units wrote: post #39
carapace wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a lot of respect for the man despite his personality problems. He knew what he wanted at a young age and pursued it with determination and persistence and achieved it. Mathematica and the business he built to support it are both great accomplishments. I'm sometimes surprised he's not more popular on HN than he is. I mention all that so it won't seem too mean-spirited when I repeat this: I've heard a joke, "Whi…

I find his personality fun and charming, possibly only because I've never had to butt heads with him.

ditto

Re: Mitchell Feigenbaum (1944–2019), 4.66920160910299067185320382…

#52

Post by Yajirobe »

JackFr wrote: post #14
ISL wrote: post #2

Mitchell Feigenbaum has, for the last ~17 years, been my vote for the next Nobel Laureate in Physics. It is a rare thing to derive an irrational fundamental mathematical constant that appears in nature. The Feigenbaum constants are as fundamental as e and \pi, and they are readily observed experimentally (though, necessarily, not to full precision :) ). Godspeed, Dr. Feigenbaum. Thank you.

> The Feigenbaum constants are as fundamental as e and \pi I suppose its debatable how fundamental a constant is , but there is no way the Feigenbaum constant is even in the same neighborhood as \pi and e.

Just because the Feigenbaum constant does not pop everywhere in our formulas, it does not mean that it's not as fundamental. I would bet that if it were different, the universe would not be able to exist as it does now (akin to making pi different).

Re: Mitchell Feigenbaum (1944–2019), 4.66920160910299067185320382…

#53

Post by tobinfricke »

kenver wrote: post #43
lonelappde wrote: post #34

"Chaos and Fractals", a huge tome of a book , from the 1990s, is an incredible book to learn about Feigenbaum's work and others. The programming language it uses is rather obsolete, but it's such a wonderful book for a motivated high school or college student.

Any chance you know the author? There's a few with similar titles.

Heinz-Otto Peitgen

Re: Mitchell Feigenbaum (1944–2019), 4.66920160910299067185320382…

#55

Post by pas »

ovi256 wrote: post #50
peapicker wrote: post #27

I was an undergrad CS intern (and Chaos enthusiast) assisting the physicists at Los Alamos Natl. Labs Center for Nonlinear Studies when he visited to give the monthly “Tea Talk” on some subject in nonlinear mathematics/ chaos theory back in ‘88. I didn’t understand most of what he said. I asked the Deputy Director, a long-time PhD Theoretical Physicist, about the gist of the talk afterwards. He said “I didn’t underst…

I'm amazed by the observation that even the Deputy Director, a seasoned theoretician, did not expect to understand a peer researcher's work without several months of collaboration. What chance does a mere undergrad or practitioner stand ! :)

Basically the same :)

Usually, after a certain level math problems become very narrow, and a small subfield develops around them. They are "easy" to get into, to catch up, read the important papers, sketch out the proofs for yourself, get a feel for the concepts and for the conjectures that lurk among them.

And usually that's it. Usually a few folks of that very particular topic/field have some ideas that they are working on, usually for at least a year, they try to formalize them, conceptualize them, communicate them, and naturally to prove them.

And sometimes draft/working papers are all we get. Sometimes someone becomes a "household" name after many persistent years like Wiles.

Re: Mitchell Feigenbaum (1944–2019), 4.66920160910299067185320382…

#56

Post by pas »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #47
isoprophlex wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy manages to, within three sentences, turn a eulogy into a diss of IEEE floating point calculations, only to boast about how his shitty proprietary math toolbox does arbitrary precision better. Just one of many grating examples of how he communicates. He's a genius though, so he has that going for him...

He's not wrong, though...

There's a place, a time, and a style for everything though.

Were he to include a WolframAlpha link to a working snippet, and mention that you need true decimals, because IEEE floats won't cut it would have probably conveyed the same without what the other commenters perceive as useless boasting.

Re: Mitchell Feigenbaum (1944–2019), 4.66920160910299067185320382…

#57

Post by Ensorceled »

JackFr wrote: post #14
ISL wrote: post #2

Mitchell Feigenbaum has, for the last ~17 years, been my vote for the next Nobel Laureate in Physics. It is a rare thing to derive an irrational fundamental mathematical constant that appears in nature. The Feigenbaum constants are as fundamental as e and \pi, and they are readily observed experimentally (though, necessarily, not to full precision :) ). Godspeed, Dr. Feigenbaum. Thank you.

> The Feigenbaum constants are as fundamental as e and \pi I suppose its debatable how fundamental a constant is , but there is no way the Feigenbaum constant is even in the same neighborhood as \pi and e.

Fundamental is kind of binary, something is either fundamental or it isn't. This is like arguing what element is more fundamental to human existence oxygen (65% by mass) or nitrogen (just 3% by mass); we die without both.

Now, like oxygen, pi and e are certainly more prevalent ...

Re: Mitchell Feigenbaum (1944–2019), 4.66920160910299067185320382…

#58

Post by peapicker »

gwf wrote: post #49
peapicker wrote: post #27

I was an undergrad CS intern (and Chaos enthusiast) assisting the physicists at Los Alamos Natl. Labs Center for Nonlinear Studies when he visited to give the monthly “Tea Talk” on some subject in nonlinear mathematics/ chaos theory back in ‘88. I didn’t understand most of what he said. I asked the Deputy Director, a long-time PhD Theoretical Physicist, about the gist of the talk afterwards. He said “I didn’t underst…

I was there as well, also as an intern. Around the same time, Mandelbrot also stopped by CNLS to give a talk. CNLS in the late 80s was truly a magical place.

It was pretty amazing. I recall Doyne Farmer was there too - he had this crazy custom coprocessor card for his cellular automata explorations. I got to write some stuff to run on a CRAY Y-MP. Got to to play with NeXT black box serial no. 36. (LANL had the first 50 I think). Lots of crazy cool people and tech!

Re: Mitchell Feigenbaum (1944–2019), 4.66920160910299067185320382…

#59

Post by tomxor »

anbop wrote: post #37
miobrien wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone elaborate as to why Wolfram’s insufferable? I’ve only looked at his blog once or twice. However this post was great.

He’s one of the great minds of his generation but his insecurity complex is so severe that he constantly needs to boast about himself and his achievements to an extent that is unbecoming even in a professional athlete. Tilting his (extremely interesting) book “A New Kind of Science” and saying that it would take a place next to Chemistry and Physics as a discipline is one such example. Even in this eulogy to a dead f…

> Tilting his (extremely interesting) book “A New Kind of Science” and saying that it would take a place next to Chemistry and Physics as a discipline is one such example.

There are a couple transcribed lectures of his on amazon, one of them "Computation and the Future of the Human Condition", they are short and deep and I find them very interesting, I read them maybe a couple years ago... somehow within that little context I was so entranced by the underlying concepts and material which just clicked with me, that this aspect of Wolfram's personality completely escaped me... My partner tried to read them and immediately picked up on it, now identified - I find everything I read from him slightly tainted. I've yet to pluck up the courage to read NKS, i'm worried I will not be able to get through it.

It's a shame because I believe some of the work he has produced and ideas he has explored to be a truly fundamental and under-explored part of nature, hopefully enough of us will appreciate that without letting his personality get in the way.

Re: Mitchell Feigenbaum (1944–2019), 4.66920160910299067185320382…

#60

Post by Retra »

miobrien wrote: post #31
anbop wrote: post #29

I normally find Stephen Wolfram insufferable (and he still is, in this article) but boy what a privilege it is to have a friend who will eulogize us like this. If I was an intellectual associate of Wolfram’s I’d ask him to write this article for me to read before I died.

Can someone elaborate as to why Wolfram’s insufferable? I’ve only looked at his blog once or twice. However this post was great.

There is an example right in this article:

>(Confusingly enough, with typical “machine precision” computer arithmetic, this doesn’t work correctly, because even though one “runs out of precision”, the IEEE Floating Point standard says to keep on delivering digits, even though they are completely wrong. Arbitrary precision in the Wolfram Language gets it right.)

The man can't help but promote himself. He worded this in a way that makes it look to a lay person like he invented arbitrary precision arithmetic, but in a way that is still technically correct. It's like he's actively trying to peddle something to people who don't know any better.

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