Weird that neither his name (Michel Talagrand) nor his nationality (French) are mentioned in the title. His nationality is not even mentioned in the article. I'd be pissed if I were him, doing something that important, and not even getting your name in the title.
Mathematician who made sense of the universe's randomness wins Abel Prize
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Re: Mathematician who made sense of the universe's randomness wins Abel Prize
#52The world needs more recognition of good mathematics and mathematicians. Really love the work quantum magazine does on covering mathematics. So many implications for the rest of the world.
Maybe credit him in the title would be a good thing to start. In the title, there is neither its name nor the price he won. His nationality is not even mentioned in the article.
Re: Mathematician who made sense of the universe's randomness wins Abel Prize
#53Weird that neither his name (Michel Talagrand) nor his nationality (French) are mentioned in the title. His nationality is not even mentioned in the article. I'd be pissed if I were him, doing something that important, and not even getting your name in the title.
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Re: Mathematician who made sense of the universe's randomness wins Abel Prize
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
For those who don't know, Quanta Magazine is financed by Jim Simons (from Chern-Simons theory) who became known as a very successful hedge fund manager. I just love the idea that he's using a portion of his billions to fund a little non-profit math magazine.
The world could always use more people like that. Something something effective altruism. It doesn't even need to be altruistic. One would expect that out of sheer self-interest, one would look into propelling humanity forward by elevating and liberating as many people as possible, enabling the brightest of our species to solve the hardest problems and elevate humanity. Though accepting that one needs others to solve…
The issue is that we've setup the system to require people like this, which more often than not exposes us to people the opposite of Jim Simons, like Robert Mercer, Peter Thiel, etc. Instead having a proper tax structure, we rely on altruistic wealthy individuals, which are rare, and mainly get people who want to drive us into libertarian hellscapes.
Re: Mathematician who made sense of the universe's randomness wins Abel Prize
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suppose for that to happen, the world needs better math lessons in school. Most have allmost traumatic experiences, so they now don't want to know anything about math at all. (I also only started to enjoy math, when I could apply it with programming, before it was not traumatic, but mostly boring, but we also did not cover any fun parts like Mandelbrot etc)
I'm always very confused by this. Why are maths lessons more traumatic than, say, history or biology or foreign language lessons? I mean learning lists of irregular verbs is not precisely most people's idea of fun. And yet only about maths do people speak with such dramatic language. There must be something beyond what's happening in schools themselves that makes people react this way. I just can't work out what it i…
In my mind math learning builds on top of the stuff you have learned earlier on different level than other subjects. If you get ”derailed” at some spot in learning it becomes tough / impossible to learn the concepts that build on top of the stuff that you didn’t understand properly.
Re: Mathematician who made sense of the universe's randomness wins Abel Prize
#56Weird that neither his name (Michel Talagrand) nor his nationality (French) are mentioned in the title. His nationality is not even mentioned in the article. I'd be pissed if I were him, doing something that important, and not even getting your name in the title.
Why would the nationality be important?
Re: Mathematician who made sense of the universe's randomness wins Abel Prize
#57Can someone please share the actual work for which he was awarded, I couldn't find.
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Re: Mathematician who made sense of the universe's randomness wins Abel Prize
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
History is not abstract. It does not give you generalizations, abstractions and models, just historical facts. Many of those facts are useful in understanding why things around you are the way they are. The attempts to make history more "scientific", usually for religious or political reasons (e.g., explaining past events throgh class struggle), end up looking like propaganda.
If you learned history as a set of facts then you did not learn history. History is about the connections between those facts and the overarching story. Science is also taught as a set of facts to be memorized, but that is also not science. In both science and history, the most important question is not "what do you know?" but "how do you know?".
If history was about making the connections, those connections could be used to make predictions that could be tested.
Re: Mathematician who made sense of the universe's randomness wins Abel Prize
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had a college friend that's super slow to learn. He would always get behind on classes and would not even get passing grades most of the time. But! When he finally learned something new, he would never forget it. He would remember it in details, both the whys and the hows. I've always admired his skill.
I always wonder if people like him are able to learn faster if the courses are structured differently.
I'm like this, and yes, very much so.
The (US) academic system is not set up to accommodate anyone, really. It's designed to get someone just below average through their standardized testing and not much more. If you don't fit that mold you're shit outta luck. You either suffer through it like "normal" people, or you find it utterly intolerable and fail or drop out.
Personally, I learn best backwards from everyone else. Building up very slowly from fundamentals and basically starting over with basic algebra every semester is actual hell. I need to see the goal concept fully formed and functional, and then work backwards to derive the fundamentals I'm missing.
Generally speaking, once I understand a concept I have it forever. I usually only need the briefest of refresher on mechanics and formulae as I use them. Spending the first month of calculus class going over 9th grade algebra is an unbelievable waste of my time.
My final attempt at college was a CS degree. I made it through one semester and did not even get to a single CS concept. It was at least a year and a half of bullshit prerequisites that I had to pay for. I dropped out when I had to write a presentation to the board of my hypothetical company on the benefits of upgrading their printers. I'm not kidding. I paid real money for this.
I've totally given up on the educational system. I don't fit into the cookie cutter ideal of the average idiot grinding out a degree. I just can't do it.
I think probably the ideal way for me to learn is to spend a lot of time one on one with a domain expert that can show me the final concept and work backwards with me to fill in the gaps in my knowledge. I don't want or need, nor can I tolerate spending time going over things I already know for the 30th time. I need to learn the things I don't know. School just doesn't work that way.
Re: Mathematician who made sense of the universe's randomness wins Abel Prize
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
it is a shame they don't do physical print through
I agree. Quanta is the sort of material I like to read during my morning coffee ritual before I start a day of screen time. Are there any quality print magazines like it? I used to get Physics World a long time ago and have been looking for something in print to scratch that same itch.
They actually kinda do have print collections of some of their articles, but in the form of books and not well marketed [0].