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Pure Math, Pure Joy
e271828 writes "The New York Times is carrying a nice little piece entitled Pure Math, Pure Joy about the beauty and applicability of pure math as carried out at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute. There is an accompanying slideshow of pictures of mathematicians in action; I particularly loved the picture titled Waging Mental Battle with a Proof."
The joy of pure math. Second only to the joy of pure self-mutilation.
What? I don't understand. No registration? OMG.
Very cool article! I liked the statement: "Nobody knows when some abstruse bit of math will float off a blackboard at a place like this and become a..." It reminded me of the radiant primes observation
I imagine it will be a method similar to this that helps us discover the first billion digit prime number, not some brute-force method. Speaking of prime numbers & slightly off-topic, on 5/31/2003 there was an eclipse (solar) over Norway from 4:43AM to 6:41AM. 5, 31, 2003, 443 & 641 are all prime...
What this picture doesn't show is the analogue clock just above the blackboard.. they aren't thinking.. just clock-watching !
"I am not bound to please thee with my answers" [William Shakespeare]
But the "unreasonable effectiveness" of mathematics in explaining the world, as the physicist Eugene Wigner once put it, is a minor motivation at best for those immersed in the field. Most mathematicians say they are in it for the math itself, for the delirious quest for patterns, the thrill of the detective chase and the lure of beautiful answers.
I sure hope this isn't really true. If mathematicans aren't really interested in helping understand the world, why should society fund them? I certainly know that a major motivation for my career in science is that understanding the world through science will help people, cure diseases, etc.
It doesn't actually have to be useful for anything now; in the academic setting you can research from obscure branch of mathematics just because you find it interesting.
Twenties Retirement
There's four links to two sites. This is called "Milking Theory", where for every set L of sites there exists 2^L links that may be made in a Slashdot post.
In "Milking Theory" if a 2^L solution is constructed, the post is said to be "milked". It is only possible to exceed 2^L links on rare occasions, and then the post is said to either be "Microsofted" or "SCOed" depending on the nature of the post itself.
Milking Theory is most commonly researched and practices by a group of theoreticians known as "Karma Whores".
Chr0m0Dr0m!C
I like the picture where someone is drawing a fish on the blackboard while others are doing math.
Who knew that I had a future in advance mathematics when I was doodling in my math notebook during class? : )
They took the pic just as he was about to draw the eye...
You can't take the sky from me...
Pure Math, Pure Joy
By DENNIS OVERBYE
A mathematician, the Hungarian lover of numbers Paul Erdos once said, is a device for converting coffee into theorems. Here, then, are a few glimpses into the Truth Factory. The Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, sustained mostly by the National Science Foundation, sits on a hill above the University of California at Berkeley, where it attracts people from around the world for stints of up to a year to lose themselves in subjects like algebraic geometry or special holonomy.
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Consider it an embassy of another world, a Platonic realm of clarity and beauty, of forms and relations, where the answers to questions not yet asked already exist.
Higher mathematics -- as opposed to what we do every April 15 -- has been relevant ever since Archimedes leaped out of his bath shouting "Eureka!" more than 2,000 years ago. Nobody knows when some abstruse bit of math will float off a blackboard at a place like this and become -- often decades later -- a key tool in cryptography, biology, physics or economics (as in "A Beautiful Mind").
Take string theory, a mathematically labyrinthine effort to construct a so-called theory of everything out of the notion that the fundamental elements of nature are tiny strings flopping and wriggling in an 11-dimensional space-time. It has been called a piece of 21st-century physics that fell by accident into the 20th century.
In their quest to negotiate this labyrinth, string theorists have made a hot topic of something called Riemann surfaces, invented by the German mathematician Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann 150 years ago, but they have also helped blaze new fields of mathematics.
"Since our theories are so far ahead of experimental capabilities, we are forced to use mathematics as our eyes," Dr. Brian Greene, a Columbia University string theorist, said recently. "That's why we follow it where it takes us even if we can't see where we're going."
So in some ways the men and women seen here scrutinizing marks on their blackboards collectively represent a kind of particle accelerator of the mind.
But the "unreasonable effectiveness" of mathematics in explaining the world, as the physicist Eugene Wigner once put it, is a minor motivation at best for those immersed in the field. Most mathematicians say they are in it for the math itself, for the delirious quest for patterns, the thrill of the detective chase and the lure of beautiful answers.
"Math is sense," said Dr. Robert Osserman, a Stanford professor and deputy director of the institute, quoting from the play "Copenhagen." "That's what sense is."
--
http://nemilar.net - Not your grandmother's soup kitchen
could someone please explain the point of this article ? like most nytimes science article it seems to have zero content. it would be nice if for a change they explained something about mathematics
Pradeep, solving the unsolvable. Man, I love that movie...
Pradeep:HOW ARE YOU TO BE LIKING THOSE APPLES SIR?
OK, not in it's entirety, and not it is a serious problem, but it would be nice if the editors could make sure that each Sunday, we don't see so many postings from a single news source. Maybe some sort of summary each Sunday on interesting stories in the NYT Sunday Edition.
Pure Math, Pure Joy
Does Google = God?
Harry Potter and the Entertainment Industry
I'd never studied linear algebra until recently when I had to learn just enough to work through the inverse kinematics of a robot arm. Actually, I never really got along with Mathematics very well anyway. But looking at how matrices can solve all kinds of problems just by drawing zig-zags through rows and columns of numbers made me wonder whether the problems they model or the problems themselves came first. As I was learning the little bit of this math that I did, it started to seem to me that the Math has an independent existence, and a somewhat mysterious set of relationships of correlations and causalities connected to but not dependant on physical nature.
How do we know that this "math" thing they write about even exists?
Actually, you do need to tell me just how useful a 100-digit prime number is. Beyond the supposed beauty of such a number (I personally don't see the beauty of it, but then again beauty is a really subjective term), what's the point? What are prime numbers useful for in daily life? I know trig is useful for rendering 3D graphics and surveying, calculus is used for launching things into orbit and aerodynamics stuff, algebra is useful for financial calculations and stuff, but I've never figured out what prime numbers are useful for, other than spending unused CPU cycles finding them.
I loved it too.
Nothing beats looking at a bunch of stoners chilling out, staring into space, and maybe hallucinating about a proof.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
the picture "Waging Mental Battle with a Proof" is really silly. those guys need a good beating.
"Being interested in helping the world" is not the same thing as "helping the world". An ox is not interested in helping plow the farmer's field, but the farmer still feeds it.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
This article also reminded me of a good book (story wise, not much math) that a lot of you have probably read. It's called Fermat's Enigma. If you haven't read it you should. It's a really good book and an easy read. I might even make you want to read a real math book again ;)
Honk if you're horny.
+5 funny. Thanks for the laugh
Look how seriously the guy on the right side is watching a fish being drawn...
I work in the maths department of a University, and yes.. it's very much like this. We sit around all day in small groups, staring at blackboards, "battling with proofs". Just like in that wonderful movie with the violent australian, "A Beautiful Mind".
No.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
Erdos himself was a device for converting speed into theorems. Ironically he lived to be 83 years old, prolifically creating new math until the very end.
My guess is that more mathematicians use amphetamines than is commonly acknowledged. This is how some older mathematicians try to keep their "edge".
BTW have you computed your Erdos Number?
HTML in the topic is a nice touch... :)
--
RSA turned out to be a combination of different parts of number theory that turned out to change our world. Who would have thought that this and this would turn into something this amazing. Don't let anyone dismiss pure math...
I am having a hard enough time passing basic college math. No thanks!
How arbitrary is that?
How is e) (prime) less valid than the solution?
How about g) (The only number greater than 29)?
How about a) because its the "bad luck" number in Chinese culture (Too bad you missed out on that one, "white devil")?
How about j) (Because today is Sunday and I feel like its the correct answer)?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Which is the odd one out: (a) 4 (b) 15 (c) 9 (d) 12 (e) 5 (f) 8 (g) 30 (h) 18 (i) 24 (j) 10
Well, anyone who knows a prime from a hole in the ground would choose (e), but the correct answer was (f), 8. And why? Because it is the only "symmetrical" number, as printed on the page!
Well, according to Ockhams razor I would argue that Mensa is right. The concept of symmetry is much simpler than the concept of prime numbers.
Tor
He has a stinky dinky!
Why else would a major newspaper have a piece that describes maths in a positive light?
You ever hear of an evil or mad Mathematician? Nope, only evil or mad scientists.While they may not be philanthropists, they are not super weapon packing misanthropes. Oh well, back to the lab...
My (insert close relative here) does minimal surfaces and hangs out with some of these guys. They look far too neatly dressed in the pictures. Anyway, for a good time, you might want to take a look at some of the galleries of images that these crazy minimal surfaces guys do. I remember about ten years ago, one of my (insert close relative)'s colleagues sold a few images to the Grateful Dead for their concerts.
http://www.msri.org/publications/sgp/jim/images/
http://www.gang.umass.edu/
There is another site out at Minnesota but I'm too lazy to look for it today.
And why exactly is this ironic ?
I'm a second year college student of pure math. I just wanted to tell all you non-believers taht its true. There is something amazingly beautiful in pure math. And in the way it is almost "above" reality. Math is applied philosophy. And if you've ever tried tackling a hard philosophical problem you know what it's like trying to understand a prinicipal in math...
God made the natural numbers; all else is the work of man - Kronecker
Ironically he lived to be 83 years old And why exactly is this ironic?
Irony is a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often amusing as a result.
Read your own linked article. Isn't it tiring being so stupid?
why run from Vincenzo?
Not to call you or your girlfriend a liar, but she couldn't have shown you a question from a mensa test. The test materials are controlled and even if they weren't the answers are not distributed outside of the scoring center (which I believe is in texas at the HQ). What you were probably looking at was some lame excuse for a mensa-like question which I would not give any merit. Also as far as I can remember, no question on the test has more than five possible answers so I would be highly skeptical of your a-j question. It kinda pisses my off when people bad-mouth mensa even though they have never been to a meeting. Also, I offer you this suggestion: if you want to criticize the test, TAKE IT FIRST!!!
Nearly half of all people are below average
Abolish the UK TV licence fee! To join BBCresistance, e-mail: bbcresistance-subscribe@topica.com
No, that is a very bad idea. The BBC would then become no better than the worthless commercial dribble that we get from every other TV station in the world, full of reality TV and other lowest common denominator crap. The excellent BBC website would also disappear.
The BBC is a British cultural beacon. And the fact that they're threatening to sue the Labour government gains them an extra vote in my book.
The text merely accompanies the photos.
Obviously there are many solutions. Extra points for the largest possible number (with a decent explanation)
0 -> 0 = 0
1 -> 1 ! = 1
2 -> 2 ! ! = 2
3 -> 3 ! ! ! = 6 ! ! = 720 ! approx. 2.6 E+1746
Any higher ??
In Murphy We Turst
"Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work." -Flaubert
You certainly don't know what you are talking about. Some tests are public and some even free.
For instance, here (Mensa Spain) you have a test publicly available.
And there are some books also publicly available sold as Mensa preparatory test books.
And that's not all, they sent me home a test (which I never filled), with solutions.
So, who is the liar?
The metabolic changes induced by persistent use of amphetamines make the heart and ither internal organs age at a rate that frightened the young me into stopping taking them at an early age.
My drug of choice for pure math was a nice bit of Leb Red in my coffee prior to starting an assignment / doing an exam.
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.
Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace,
And lay them prone upon the earth and cease
To ponder on themselves, the while they stare
At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere
In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese
Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release
From dusty bondage into luminous air.
O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day,
When first the shaft into his vision shone
Of light anatomized! Euclid alone
Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they
Who, though once only and then but far away,
Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.
--Edna St. Vincent Millay
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
30 is symmetric vertically in most fonts, and 10 is probably symmetric in a few. Thanks, Mensa!
The title of the article is "Pure Math, Pure Joy" and it's about MSRI. While it is a phenomenal place, it is no picnic for young mathematicians for sure and is often referred to as "misery", as in "yeah, I spent a year in misery (MSRI)".
For the love of $DEITY, loose != not win!!!!!
It is clearly the only answer written in binary.
Bitter and proud of it.
Pure math has been described by one friend of mine as "mathturbation", while another observed that the entire field of computer science has a severe case of "Math Envy". I'm more down with the later opinion.
-cbare
Unibomber = Ted K. the mathematician and genius
Why do smart people commit slow suicide by smoking? Note: I consider "addiction" an insufficient answer.
Is there a god?
If yes: Is s/he/it benevolent?
If yes: Why do so many good people die horribly?
Why do really stupid people run the USA, and the Pentagon? If we don't stop it we're all going to die
Can FIFA (Soccer) call their international tournament a "World Cup" if they exclude a place for Oceania?
Why does washing the car bring on rain?
Why does serving coffee on aeroplanes cause turbulence?
Was the French Resistance really an evil band of terrorists?
Why do Israelis who understand what the holocost was, do what they do to the Palestinians?
Why would cigarette ash make a keyboard "sticky"? Are you sure it isn't some sugar based substance that you have spilt on it? Are you typing and eating twinkie cakes at the same time?
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
Erdos only took teeny-tiny amounts of speed. Sub-therapeutic (let alone sub-recreational) doses, as his biography makes clear.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
Can't believe how the times contorted this story. It was orginally about the development of a new hi-res, giant seamless LCD, not some useless math games.
The untouched pic is available here:
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2003-6/257102/math
I really enjoyed it when that guy dies after kicking Jodie Foster off the first mission in the machine they build.
:-)
.
I would really enjoy it if you died too
as if you know exactly what the world around us is. .
You should stick with your wild, one-man, orgy experiments
When Ed was at MSRI he took a lot of photos..Theres a number of other images in the series, and you can see them at
/ sh ow_article
http://www.msri.org/media/MediaInfo/38/articles
-Chris
I'm about to complete my Ph.D. in math. There are some things which won't ever become useful. I'm not well enough versed in the history of mathematics to quote a result from 150 years ago that has proven to be useless, but I can quote a result that I've proven, and I'm betting my immortal soul that nobody will use it for the next 150 years:
There is a bilinear form f(x,y) over the vector space of sup-normed functions so that
max |f(x,y)|/(|x| |y|) = 3sqrt(3)/4 max |f(x,x)|/(|x| |x|)
Cheers,
Sebastien Loisel
http://www.math.mcgill.ca/loisel/
This is so odd, I just finished writing about this today. Years, ago, a friend of mine had a dream that a bunch of us were in a grad math class... topology or analysis or something and we'd been working on a proof for days and gotten to a point where we couldn't get any farther without "proof by mutilation" -- somebody had to cut off an arm. And the scary/funny thing was, we had all decided to do it, the only remaining debate was about whose arm it was going to be.
Crazy mathematicians. But less soul-destroying than I/T, that's for sure.
Tweet, tweet.
There are lots of math sites.
Which one, or ones, do you like ?
Any suggestion ?
Thanks !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Erdos said, "You've showed me I'm not an addict. But I didn't get any work done. I'd get up in the morning and stare at a blank piece of paper. I'd have no ideas, just like an ordinary person. You've set mathematics back a month." He promptly resumed taking pills, and mathematics was the better for it.
Isn't this practically a definition of Attention Deficit Disorder? As I recall, Ritalin is just a specific type of amphetamine. (And I know I have a heck of a time getting any coding done if I haven't taken mine.)
That's because John Travolta Hacks using Microsoft Bob hacking wizard...
OTOH Trinity uses NMAP and we all think it's great (Go, Matrix...)
The one I like to ask Jehovah's witnesses impertinate enough to get me out of bed early on Saturday mornings, is borrowed from philosphy "Descartes" (?)
How do you know that the world was not created with everything including your memories precisely 10 minutes ago?
Why entropy? Why get out of bed?
Answer: Eventually entropy makes your bed uninhabitable and you have to get out of it (or get someone else to lift you out of it) and fix it up.
Why can't slashdot code automatically detect that I have placed no html code in my post and display it as plain text with line breaks as I intended?
What happens when you combine a short attention span with a highly active brain?
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
I think my view of MSRI is coloured a bit by knowing a good chunk of the people involved. There are some pretty crazy stories there ...
I should note that I don't think that MSRI is miserable at all, I just liked the self-deprecating nature of the nickname. I've never been there, but I've heard that it is really lovely.