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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

#71

Post by theGnuMe »

Onavo wrote: post #28
nordsieck wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO, you're thinking about this backwards. It's good that public school exposes children to many subjects - hopefully most of them. So that they can discover if they click with one of them. The real danger is that someone never gets exposed to a subject at all. College is the place to specialize in a subject.

But if their overall SAT scores aren't good enough to get into the elite colleges, won't we just be denying the eccentric geniuses?

I like to look at the backgrounds of the people who win the Nobel prize. Everyone is interdisciplinary.

For college and life in general, I think main skill needed is emotional regulation. Everything else flows from that.

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

#72

Post by slibhb »

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…

You're assuming it's luck. But maybe we're actually good at identifying boundary-pushing geniuses? There are huge, huge incentives for being good at that.

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

#73

Post by melagonster »

jyunwai wrote: post #56
seiferteric wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exposure is good, but success in school requires you to be successful in these subjects as well. I have had similar thoughts recently as OP thinking about what I want for my young kids and what my experiences in school were. Being _really_ good in one thing should allow you to make up for being subpar in other areas, but it doesn't. You can only get an A (or A+) in math for example, even if your a genius. But maybe y…

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…

I like the first reply immediately try to scoff you :) Maybe oop is right, but the real problem is people always try to do this.

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

#74

Post by clipsy »

coliveira wrote: post #55
Onavo wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if their overall SAT scores aren't good enough to get into the elite colleges, won't we just be denying the eccentric geniuses?

Well, the eccentric geniuses have already left the system... Frankly, if you go through the last 30 years, how many such geniuses you can find in American universities? I only see a little bit higher than average, so it seems that the system has already eliminated the geniuses.

> I only see a little bit higher than average

Could you share your source for statistics on "eccentric geniuses"?

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

#75

Post by IAmGraydon »

The stories of mathematicians like Srinivasa Ramanujan, who claimed to have derived complex partitions and identities in dreams, have always captivated me. It's as if their minds were tapping into some hidden reservoir of knowledge. I'm curious what drives these intuitive leaps. Was Ramanujan's brain quietly processing patterns during sleep, leveraging its default mode network in ways we're still struggling to understand? Or was it something more fundamental – an emergent property of complex neural networks, perhaps, or even a glimpse into Jung's collective unconscious?

I'm curious to hear how others think about this phenomenon. Do recent advances in neuroscience, AI, or cognitive psychology offer any clues about how innovators like Ramanujan access these hidden sources of insight? Or are we still stuck in the realm of "genius is mysterious"?

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

#76

Post by furyofantares »

naikrovek wrote: post #33
kennedywm wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We didn’t fully ban them. We just prescribe them to anyone a doctor decides has ADHD.

Not quite, but if one does not have ADHD or something similar, things like adderall have a very different effect than they do to someone who has ADHD. Your apparent disbelief in ADHD doesn’t make it imaginary, by the way. Consider yourself lucky that you do not have it; I am unemployable without medication.

People without ADHD take adderall &etc for focus/performance enhancing reasons. Some get it from a friend, some are incorrectly diagnosed. I don't know if you disagree that this is the case, but I don't think it implies anything about ADHD.

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

#77

Post by meiraleal »

seiferteric wrote: post #24
nordsieck wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO, you're thinking about this backwards. It's good that public school exposes children to many subjects - hopefully most of them. So that they can discover if they click with one of them. The real danger is that someone never gets exposed to a subject at all. College is the place to specialize in a subject.

Exposure is good, but success in school requires you to be successful in these subjects as well. I have had similar thoughts recently as OP thinking about what I want for my young kids and what my experiences in school were. Being _really_ good in one thing should allow you to make up for being subpar in other areas, but it doesn't. You can only get an A (or A+) in math for example, even if your a genius. But maybe y…

> but success in school requires you to be successful in these subjects as well.

It requires a very small success on a very basic level. It is not good to be a super math genius and know nothing about geography and history.

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

#78

Post by xanderlewis »

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.

> Satyendra Nath Bose

I imagine most people won't recognise the name. But everyone's heard of a boson. So he's somewhat immortalised — more than most.

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

#79

Post by xanderlewis »

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.

I've noticed India seems to be full of ring theorists/algebraic geometers. I wonder if that's actually true and, if so, why.

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

#80

Post by xanderlewis »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #14
NAHWheatCracker wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people are, they're called nootropics. Whether they are successful and whether they are mostly a bunch of snake oil is another question...

[flagged]

'Source'.
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