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To a mathematician, some things are far more important than mere money. I know, my PhD is in pure mathematics - I've seen up-close that mathematicians can be a
by abstractbill 16y ago
To a mathematician, some things are far more important than mere money.
I know, my PhD is in pure mathematics - I've seen up-close that mathematicians can be an odd bunch ;)
Using the money to fund some kind of an alternative to the organisation he believes is corrupt, surely wouldn't make him corrupt though, just to take one example?
- kqr2 16y agoIn some ways, he's "spending" his million dollars to make a public statement about his view of the organization. Had he just accepted the prize, there would probably be little mention of it in the main stream media.
- abstractbill 16y agoThat's very true - good point. I wonder what it would actually cost to make this much of a public statement if he spent the money directly that way - maybe it is comparable.
- Groxx 16y agoOh, probably more. How much does human interest cost? This has captured quite a few people's attention, especially considering it's catching people not in mathematics.
- abstractbill 16y agoHow much does human interest cost? I couldn't resist thinking about this a bit more. Something comparable would be firefox's double-page New York Times ad, which apparently cost about $200k (http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/007103.html http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/007103.html) and certainly reached a lot of non-mathematicians. Even though Perelman's action has generated quite a bit of press attention, my gut feeling is he could have paid for even more attention if he chose to use the prize money to raise awareness directly. That said, if he really wanted to get maximum exposure, he could continue to ignore the prize for almost a year, but accept it at the last minute and then spend it all on ads telling the world how corrupt academic mathematics is ;)
- ryoshu 16y agoJust because someone is a genius mathematician doesn't mean he is good at numbers.
- gruseom 16y agoA point that non-mathematicians will never understand! I used to always correct people by saying, "No, you mean arithmetic," until I realized how hopelessly pedantic it was.
- Groxx 16y agoFirefox though went from a fairly large amount of people to a fair amount larger amount of people. I'll bet this guy went from 4-digit people knowing (of) him to 7 or more digits. I'd think generating interest from something minute would be harder than from something a lot of people have at least heard of.