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Who Was Ramanujan?
- manav 10y agoOne thing that really stood out to me was that Ramunajan got lost in the traditional system of Academia which persists even now. There could have been (and may still be) so much talent out there that may never get a chance. I also really wish the letters were more legible. I think it would be interesting to read some of these older mathematics texts.
- tunesmith 10y agoIt's worth noting this was originally a blog post on Stephen Wolfram's personal blog, where you'd expect an author's voice to permeate the content (although that didn't stop people from complaining about his other blog entries). I personally appreciate authors dropping their own biographical details when they write about something else, it gives it a more personal voice. Plus, Mathematica is relevant. It's not as if he's doing product placement for Purina Puppy Chow, which is a great way to feed your growing puppy and give him all the nutrients he needs.
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- tetromino_ 10y ago50% of the text is the fascinating story of Ramanujan. Unfortunately, the other 50% is a series of shameless product placements for the author's software and boasts about the author's personal and intellectual accomplishments. The story, the boasts, and the ads are all mixed together, so reading the thing all the way to the end was seriously painful.
- Dawny33 10y agoTrue. Maybe, skimming through the article without bothering about the hyperlinks would be so much better. He went to the extent of hyperlinking the words `Madras` and `Sanskrit` to their WolframAlfa search links :/
- willvarfar 10y agoSo you mean google employees should put bing links in their blog posts rather than google links?
- BasDirks 10y agoThey should not put any links to a damn search engine in such texts. If people want to Google "Sanskrit", I'm sure they will manage.
- dsfuoi 10y agoSo according to your logic, link to this article should be removed and anyone wanting to find it should manage. I also find it delightfully ironic that you used the term to Google "Sanskrit". and not to WolframAlpha "Sanskrit". Hypocrisy is oozing out of your comment.
- BasDirks 10y agoI was not very careful in phrasing my previous comment. I was thinking of a situation where a Google employee puts links in the actual copy of an article not primarily about search engines. I find it more permissible in the case of WolframAlpha, because it calls itself a knowledge engine, and provides carefully curated content. Google is a more generic beast, and I just don't think it makes sense to litter a text with hyperlinks. If I see a link, I will presume that the author wants me to click it and read it. If it is very general "further reading", I prefer having these presented after the main material. A lot of preferences and assumptions on my part. My gripe with OP is how it integrates the product into the text. I like hyperlinks, but I prefer separation of copy and generic resources.
- linhchi 10y agohaha :D This is typical. I sign up my email and always get advertising mails in disguise of good cause and buzzwords. SW is very keen on selling his expensive baby. And I think he is a rare combination of genius and salesman. So maybe Trump can sell his presidency, who knows.
- johnloeber 10y agoMixed feelings about this article: 1. A fine easy read about Ramanujan and Hardy. It was well-summarized and nicely written, with excellent pictures that I had not seen before. 2. A disgusting vein of self-promotion runs throughout the article. Much has been said about Stephan Wolfram's occasionally self-centered behavior, and many of his writings have a self-aggrandizing tone to them. Thus, I was pleasantly surprised to find the piece start out with little self-reference by the author, until: > The other, slightly more famous, track — less austere and less mathematically oriented — was Eton and Oxford, which happens to be where I went. How is that relevant in an article titled Who was Ramanujan? It got worse a few paragraphs later, as Wolfram began discussing numeric approximations, and engaging in what was effectively product placement for WolframAlpha and Mathematica. There I was, trying to read about Ramanujan, and Wolfram kept interjecting with comments about his computation engine and his implementations of Ramanujan's formulae. Toward the end of the article, after the biography of Ramanujan was complete and Wolfram turned to discussing expansions of Ramanujan's results, such topics were fair game. "What if Ramanujan had had Mathematica?" is a valid question. Discussing cellular automata and Wolfram's principle of computational equivalence, etc., etc. was fine at that point, since these are valid expansions to the topic at hand. Nonetheless, the blatant product placement and continuous breaking of the flow of the text to push some function implemented in WolframAlpha on the reader was extraordinarily annoying, and, frankly, deeply disappointing. If Wolfram sets out to write the unlikely tale of a mysterious letter, and its place in the history of mathematics, as advertised by the subtitle, then I would have hoped that he could leave his egregious self-advertising to the end of the article -- or better yet -- to a separate one altogether.
- x5n1 10y agoI previously wrote here how on his Wikipedia page there is nothing about his family other than some vague reference. A user below pointed out this was because of his fear for his family's privacy. Which is fair enough.
- johnloeber 10y agoWhat does that have to do with anything?
- codeulike 10y agoI just knew Wolfram was going to draw parallels. Such an arse.
- neipfjin239 10y agoThe (sadly all too predictable) comments about Wolfram's self-promotion and product placement give me an idea. Someone should create a blog called "Wolfram minus Wolfram" (in the vein of the excellent "Garfield minus Garfield") which exists solely to republish Wolfram's (often very interesting) writings, minus the references to his own products and his own past achievements. I think it would be popular.
- johnloeber 10y agoRepublishing? I suspect you would immediately find yourself in boiling water with Wolfram's lawyers. See this nice story: http://bactra.org/reviews/wolfram/ http://bactra.org/reviews/wolfram/
- davros 10y agoThanks for the link - a nice review of 'a new kind of science'
- wglb 10y agoSubtitled A Rare Blend of Monster Raving Egomania and Utter Batshit Insanity
- 77pt77 10y agoBefore opening the link I thought you were joking. Surprisingly you weren't. That's actually the subtitle.
- goldenkey 10y agoGreat review even though I took NKS with a grain of salt and did not get hypnotized by it. I feel like NKS is not pseudo science but lacks much rigor and it written much like a treatise for computational experimental research on entropy and information. So Wolfram still is ok in my book despite his vices
- carlob 10y agoWell given that writing a blog post is a form of advertising, this could just be an add-on for existing adblockers. We could just use NLP to eliminate plugs from all corporate and personal blogs. I can already see a future where forbes issues a big message: "we've noticed you're using plugblockerplus, please disable it if you love our writing!"
- willvarfar 10y agoA very nice article. Personally I'm not bothered by the "self-promotion" others perceive in Wolfram's posts. The criticism in the comments here are all very repetitive and tiresome. I presume many read anything written by Wolfram with the hope of finding something they can point out as self-promotion ;)
- r0muald 10y agoNo, sorry but I can't agree with you. I had no idea the post was by Wolfram until the end due to loading it on a poor connection, and while at first it seemed just here and there, why not. It's also the first time I read a piece by him and honestly I was furious at the promotional tone of it long before the end. But his story is so beautiful and tragic, I wanted to read it again (I remember reading other accounts in the past). What's worst: it seems to appropriate a wonderful story by making it seem as if Mathematica is the natural outcome of Ramanujan's work.
- murukesh_s 10y agoIt is completely OK for him to do self-promotion (it might not have been deliberately). But it would have been far far better if hand't mentioned mathematica or himself. The article then would have been gold
- cbd1984 10y agoIt's too bad they rely on slave labor.
- Cyph0n 10y agoYeah, it wasn't too distracting in this article, and it was so well written that it's actually hard to notice.
- bpchaps 10y agoI wrote this up last night but decided not to post it, but why not, since it's topical now. He might've learned from the criticism last time. sed 's/[^a-zA-Z]/ /' rama.txt | tr ' ' '\n' | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | egrep "^(mine|his|me|i|him|he)$"| sort | uniq -c | sort -n 11 me 15 him 82 i 107 his 148 he sed 's/[^a-zA-Z]/ /' minsk.txt | tr ' ' '\n' | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | egrep "^(mine|his|me|i|him|he)$"| sort | uniq -c | sort -n 4 him 11 me 22 his 45 he 51 i
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- amelius 10y agoThere are some nice videos on youtube explaining the 1+2+3+...=-1/12 equation. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcKRGpMiVTw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcKRGpMiVTw
- jjgreen 10y agoFor an in-depth treatment, see Hardy's scandalous "Divergent Series"
- enthdegree 10y agoThis is the best video on the topic I have seen. Many other ones I have seen often revert to using properties that don't work for ill-behaving series, like rearranging terms.
- camperman 10y agoI just discovered this guy's channel the other day - and now I'm completely addicted! Help!
- goldenkey 10y agoMe too! Ive started learning math. It seems like math is taught as number crunching but is really the philosophy and study of computation and operations on objects. Higher level math seems fundamental to CS and all the other sciences. Im now on my journey to understand the syntax and basic ideas. Wikipedia is great. And this video series is amazing: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CMWFmjlB8v0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CMWFmjlB8v0
- camperman 10y agoThank you kindly - subscribed.
- amelius 10y agoFun fact: the Mathologer is also an amazing juggler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zabtIAUKVXY&feature=youtu.be&t=1m51s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zabtIAUKVXY&feature=youtu.be...
- pinkskip 10y agoThat handwriting tho woah!
- _navaneethan 10y agoI am very proud that I am sharing the same native place [Erode] I happened to read about his life story before quite sometime. It was full of wonders. During his life-period, He used to go to some calm place(temple) with few notebooks and after few minutes having his eyes closed, would start to write solving problems in his notebooks. Those periods the opportunities for exploring was very difficult. Since, the people were very conservative to accept him for being unique(different from others). Because, he was very genius in mathematics unlike other subjects. The society where he belongs did not acknowledge(unable to understand his works) him for what he was deserved. He could not get even the normal job to survive. His family became upset for his incomplete qualification(in terms of degree). So, he absconded from his place. In fact he tried to commit suicide too. Later period fortunately few people came to understand the value of his efforts few bits. With help of few elite members in society, he put the letter to Mr Hardy which was the turning point for all mathematician's life which gave full of challenges to understand his work. He was moved to UK. There his health was not supportive, then he died very early. P.S: If he was given full freedom to function himself in earlier times, The maths society would have gotten more and more theorems and evolution would have been quite speedy. Whatta truly inspiring life he lived. [Erode] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erode)
- sriram_malhar 10y agoI haven't even begun to read the article and I'm fascinated already. Stephen Wolfram speaking of someone who is not called "Stephen Wolfram". Woooah! Edit: Finished reading the article, and after blocking out all self-references, I must grudgingly admit I had a good time. This was a nice quick narrative, and I appreciated the insight about the exploratory style of Ramanujam's mathematics (rather than lemma-theorem-corollary style)
- daemonk 10y agoNice read. Product placements didn't really bother me. I just skipped them.
- lispython 10y agoLast year, I had a talk with Stephen Wolfram, he said that, for him, the most important secret helping him solve problems is "some version of confidence or arrogant". That make him never fear any difficulty, but this arrogant inevitably behave in some other aspects of his life, and affect people's impression of him. Then, his writing style never bother me again.
- p4wnc6 10y agoWhy doesn't that bother you? It reminds me a little of the giant middle finger that Bezos recently gave to his workers via his letter to shareholders, in which he effectively said that he knew the workplaces he fostered at Amazon were unhealthy, toxic, soul-crushing graveyards, but basically that he didn't plan on changing it and didn't give a shit if people didn't like it or even if it was demonstrably unhealthy for them. Saying "I've become successful" (or in Wolfram's case, very marginally successful) "because of some arrogance" is not some redeeming, insightful virtue. In fact, in many ways the person is saying, "I took the lazy way of using my laurels and status to treat others badly and act entitled to my asshole tendencies." Instead of working hard to succeed with class, Wolfram, like so many other tedious and unremarkable people that pinch up some minor bit of fame for a while, is just excusing his own laziness.
- gnaritas 10y agoThat's just an excuse, it doesn't make bad behavior OK.
- sachkris 10y agoTowards the end, it reminded me of the book "Gödel, Escher, Bach".
- hellofunk 10y agoPlain and simple, Ramanujan was the Mozart of mathematics. Seemingly god-like insight into numbers that even he could not completely explain. There are excellent anecdotes about his life in the book Music of the Primes.
- known 10y agoExpel Brahmin From USA https://petitions.whitehouse.gov//petition/expel-brahmin-usa https://petitions.whitehouse.gov//petition/expel-brahmin-usa
- tempodox 10y agoAmita? I thought everyone knew her.
- abc_lisper 10y agoVery nice write-up. As an Indian, I grew up hearing about stories of Ramanujan, but never understood what it is that he did, or how he did it. I think Wolfram is perfect person to show us behind the curtain. For example, I remember hearing that Ramanujan stated some theorems that people in the west are still trying to prove. I didn't know what to make of it. Wolfram nicely showed the iterative (and approximate) approaches Ramanujan took to achieve this.
- phasmantistes 10y agoI was lucky enough to see The Man Who Knew Infinity this past weekend at the San Francisco International Film Festival. And I'd just like to say that it is a truly beautiful film, and I encourage everyone to go see it. After the showing, there was a panel discussion with the director, composer, producer, two actors (Stephen Fry!), and three consulting mathematicians who helped the production. One of the topics that came up was the recent (finally!) interest in Hollywood for making movies about technical people. Since the dawn of cinema, we've made movies about artists, writers, and poets. But it is only recently that we've started making movies about scientists (Stephen Hawking) and mathematicians (Alan Turing). In my opinion, this movie puts both The Theory of Everything and The Imitation Game to shame. It is much more moving and beautiful than both, and it doesn't fall into the either the trap of overly simplifying the math, nor of overly dramatizing his life. If you have any interest in math, science, or computer science (much of which is underpinned by his work in number theory), I highly encourage you to go see this film.
- perseusprime11 10y agoI agree. This is such a great movie. They put a lot of effort in making the math accessible to all.
- wil421 10y agoWe have been making films about technical people for a while. A Beautiful Mind comes to mind first I am sure I can find some more. Takedown, and Pirates of Silicon Valley are some others. Funny as I search for more about actual people, a lot of fictional movies were created around the time the dot com bubble burst.
- phasmantistes 10y agoA Beautiful Mind isn't as long ago as you think: less than 15 years. In the space of cinema (which was producing films about famous artists at least as early as the '30s) that's not very long. Takedown and Pirates of Silicon Valley are also a bit different: hacking has been part of "pop culture" since the mid 90s at least, and Pirates is a documentary anyway.
- cbd1984 10y agoThis article is blatantly incorrect.
- my_first_acct 10y agoFor personal reasons, I was pretty interested by one of the digressions: the origins of the phrase “mathematics… is a young man’s game”, and a discussion of whether it is still (or ever was) true (focusing on the age question, not the gender bias, of course).