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This article brings to mind the movie "Good Will Hunting", specifically the mention of Srinivasa Ramanujan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan ht

by Doyen 7y ago

This article brings to mind the movie "Good Will Hunting", specifically the mention of Srinivasa Ramanujan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan). I disagree that it's difficult to teach yourself mathemitcs. As with all things, success in self-directed teaching depends on the aptitude of the learner combined with their desire to learn.

adamnemecek 7y ago
I really wish Hollywood never talked about mathematics ever again.
- pm90 7y ago
  Why is that? I agree its somewhat disingenuous, and not representative of how mathematics is really done (most of which regular people would probably find pretty un-exciting and mundane). But it does increase visibility about those things. Instead of John Nash being someone who only mathematicians/academics knew of, his name is now (somewhat) more better known, isn't it? A book and a movie. To be honest, I grew up in a pre-internet, pre-wikipedia world, and without movies like those I maybe would have never heard/known about these folks and what they did.
  - kevinventullo 7y ago
    I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other, but I do want to point out that they didn't make a movie about John Nash because he was a great mathematician, they made a movie because he was a great mathematician who had schizophrenia. It's not obvious to me that this image of mathematicians in popular culture is better than no image at all.
    - adamnemecek 7y ago
      Yeah, for some reason people love this idea of a tortured "genius". I think that it makes the audience feel better. The idea that people can be smart and also relatively ok would make people jealous.
      - dondawest 7y ago
        Name one genius who ain’t crazy. Seriously: ONE. Hollywood isn’t making movies about “tortured geniuses” to pander: they’re doing it to reflect reality.
        kevinventullo 7y ago
        Peter Scholze
        dondawest 7y ago
        $1000000000000000 says on a long enough timeline he will be proven crazy
        adamnemecek 7y ago
        Don't confuse eccentricity and actual mental illness. Schizophrenia is something else than say OCD or anxiety.
- warent 7y ago
  Oh, come on. Hollywood can tell a compelling story to inspire people to get into fields they wouldn't have considered otherwise, even if only as amateurs and hobbyists. A lot of kids watching Iron Man are probably excited to grow up to get into machine learning and robotics.
  - adamnemecek 7y ago
    They can tell a compelling story but I hate how they distort the reality. I feel like a lot of the plots are altered to fit this Hollywood format. Sometimes the antagonists feel forced. Or the friendships feel forced. Or the back story fells forced. I don't want a movie where they just take someone's name and likelihood and plaster the standard Hollywood tropes on it. I hate the "writing math on windows thing".
    - MPSimmons 7y ago
      But... people actually do write on windows and glass like that. It happened at the University I worked at, it happens at my current job. It's just a thing.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
kd0amg 7y ago
Can you offer any empirical evidence that it is not difficult? The vast majority of people I've encountered who are entirely self-taught beyond typical high school (or college freshman) material have been quite bad. They repeatedly make fundamental errors of the sort I would expect to be swiftly corrected in undergrad coursework, even in topics they (claim to) have studied for years. I don't think I've met anyone who learned to write a good proof without significant human instruction. That is probably something to be expected because much of what makes a "good" proof is social expectations, but I see a lot more cases of unjustifiable leaps of logic than excessive, obvious detail.
- empath75 7y ago
  What does it mean to ‘learn math’? I feel like there’s a value to learning enough math that you understand the general concepts and vocabulary and having an intelligent conversation with a mathematician about, for example, how group theory might apply to some problem you’re working on, without having an actual working knowledge of group theory yourself. I feel like it’s relatively easy to learn a lot _about_ math, as a self learner, without knowing a lot about how to _do_ math. I’m mostly set taught, and I know the notation, I know the vocabulary, and I can follow along with a lot of math papers without too much of looking up terminology and I’ve adapted things I’ve read in math papers into working code, but I’m also well aware of my limitations —- I don’t know how to evaluate whether any of these papers are valid, I don’t have any sort of working knowledge of the tools of proofs to be able to do anything outside of fairly elementary calculus, etc. I know about higher math, but I wouldn’t say I know higher math. But even without that working knowledge, I wouldn’t say that what I know is valueless.
- Koshkin 7y ago
  Difficult or not, people - programmers, engineers, scientists - keep learning mathematics all the time. True, it may be difficult if you have little background, but for the vast majority of people with a high school diploma it should be no problem, especially given the amount of materials available.
warent 7y ago
I agree that teaching yourself mathematics is possible, but I don't think Ramanujan is a good example. He was a prodigy with something about his brain that was simply wired for mathematics and patterns. Solutions came to him as divine visions with little formal rationale or proof.
- soVeryTired 7y ago
  Ramanujan was also (relatively) bad at actually proving theorems, and worked mainly from intuition. He got a bit of culture shock when he moved to Cambridge and was expected to document his logic in the laborious detail that mathematics expects.

by Doyen 7y ago

adamnemecek 7y ago

I really wish Hollywood never talked about mathematics ever again.

pm90 7y ago
Why is that? I agree its somewhat disingenuous, and not representative of how mathematics is really done (most of which regular people would probably find pretty un-exciting and mundane). But it does increase visibility about those things. Instead of John Nash being someone who only mathematicians/academics knew of, his name is now (somewhat) more better known, isn't it? A book and a movie. To be honest, I grew up in a pre-internet, pre-wikipedia world, and without movies like those I maybe would have never heard/known about these folks and what they did.
- kevinventullo 7y ago
  I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other, but I do want to point out that they didn't make a movie about John Nash because he was a great mathematician, they made a movie because he was a great mathematician who had schizophrenia. It's not obvious to me that this image of mathematicians in popular culture is better than no image at all.
  - adamnemecek 7y ago
    Yeah, for some reason people love this idea of a tortured "genius". I think that it makes the audience feel better. The idea that people can be smart and also relatively ok would make people jealous.
    - dondawest 7y ago
      Name one genius who ain’t crazy. Seriously: ONE. Hollywood isn’t making movies about “tortured geniuses” to pander: they’re doing it to reflect reality.
      - kevinventullo 7y ago
        Peter Scholze
        dondawest 7y ago
        $1000000000000000 says on a long enough timeline he will be proven crazy
      - adamnemecek 7y ago
        Don't confuse eccentricity and actual mental illness. Schizophrenia is something else than say OCD or anxiety.
warent 7y ago
Oh, come on. Hollywood can tell a compelling story to inspire people to get into fields they wouldn't have considered otherwise, even if only as amateurs and hobbyists. A lot of kids watching Iron Man are probably excited to grow up to get into machine learning and robotics.
- adamnemecek 7y ago
  They can tell a compelling story but I hate how they distort the reality. I feel like a lot of the plots are altered to fit this Hollywood format. Sometimes the antagonists feel forced. Or the friendships feel forced. Or the back story fells forced. I don't want a movie where they just take someone's name and likelihood and plaster the standard Hollywood tropes on it. I hate the "writing math on windows thing".
  - MPSimmons 7y ago
    But... people actually do write on windows and glass like that. It happened at the University I worked at, it happens at my current job. It's just a thing.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

kd0amg 7y ago

Can you offer any empirical evidence that it is not difficult? The vast majority of people I've encountered who are entirely self-taught beyond typical high school (or college freshman) material have been quite bad. They repeatedly make fundamental errors of the sort I would expect to be swiftly corrected in undergrad coursework, even in topics they (claim to) have studied for years. I don't think I've met anyone who learned to write a good proof without significant human instruction. That is probably something to be expected because much of what makes a "good" proof is social expectations, but I see a lot more cases of unjustifiable leaps of logic than excessive, obvious detail.

empath75 7y ago
What does it mean to ‘learn math’? I feel like there’s a value to learning enough math that you understand the general concepts and vocabulary and having an intelligent conversation with a mathematician about, for example, how group theory might apply to some problem you’re working on, without having an actual working knowledge of group theory yourself. I feel like it’s relatively easy to learn a lot _about_ math, as a self learner, without knowing a lot about how to _do_ math. I’m mostly set taught, and I know the notation, I know the vocabulary, and I can follow along with a lot of math papers without too much of looking up terminology and I’ve adapted things I’ve read in math papers into working code, but I’m also well aware of my limitations —- I don’t know how to evaluate whether any of these papers are valid, I don’t have any sort of working knowledge of the tools of proofs to be able to do anything outside of fairly elementary calculus, etc. I know about higher math, but I wouldn’t say I know higher math. But even without that working knowledge, I wouldn’t say that what I know is valueless.
Koshkin 7y ago
Difficult or not, people - programmers, engineers, scientists - keep learning mathematics all the time. True, it may be difficult if you have little background, but for the vast majority of people with a high school diploma it should be no problem, especially given the amount of materials available.

warent 7y ago

I agree that teaching yourself mathematics is possible, but I don't think Ramanujan is a good example. He was a prodigy with something about his brain that was simply wired for mathematics and patterns. Solutions came to him as divine visions with little formal rationale or proof.

soVeryTired 7y ago
Ramanujan was also (relatively) bad at actually proving theorems, and worked mainly from intuition. He got a bit of culture shock when he moved to Cambridge and was expected to document his logic in the laborious detail that mathematics expects.