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He's also the mathematician who worked on the Manhattan Project and was asked to confirm the calculations that setting off the first test blast would not create
by squeakynick 11y ago
He's also the mathematician who worked on the Manhattan Project and was asked to confirm the calculations that setting off the first test blast would not create a fireball that would burn up all the oxygen on the planet!
- fluxic 11y agoHaha. That's addressed in his essay!!
- wodenokoto 11y agoIs it from him we get hamming and Manhattan distances?
- dalke 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hamming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hamming - "Known for: Hamming code, Hamming window, Hamming numbers, Hamming distance, Association for Computing Machinery" I do not know the origin of the term "Manhattan distance". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicab_geometry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicab_geometry says the concept comes from Minkowski in the 1800s, and a Google Scholar and Google ngram search suggest the term originates from around 1960, and the more common older term was "rectilinear distance". (See https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Manhattan+distance%2Ctaxicab+geometry%2Crectilinear+distance&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2CManhattan%20distance%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Ctaxicab%20geometry%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Crectilinear%20distance%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Manhattan+dist... .)
- qntty 11y agoManhattan distance is because Manhattan is a grid, and that's how taxis drive or how people walk.
- dalke 11y agoYes. That's also described in the link I gave, including a picture. My question is, who introduced the term to the literature? Was it Hamming, or someone else?
- swalsh 11y agoI believe he's also the same hamming who is named for the Hamming Weight: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamming_weight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamming_weight I made a crazy efficient engine for approving prior authorization data using it :D