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This is the only bit I disagree with. Math is his life. In some respects, that's like expecting someone whose "life is languages" to be able to speak every lan

This is the only bit I disagree with. Math is his life. In some respects, that's like expecting someone whose "life is languages" to be able to speak every language on the planet fluently. Math is definitely a coherent whole with the different subfields like algebra and analysis being a part of it but, at the same time, there are enough differences between them and enough depth in each that we're not going to see anyone remotely close to the level at which Eppes is portrayed.

wccrawford 15y ago
No, not really. I don't expect him to know EVERY math technique. He knows many. Too many, possibly... But he could easily know all the ones used in the show, if that were his focus in life. Likewise, a linguist would know the differences between languages without actually being able to speak all the languages in the world. If a relatively-unknown language had a special property that no other language did, I'd expect serious linguists to know that. Eventually, anyhow.