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Near the beginning of a class, Professor Neyman wrote two problems on the blackboard. Dantzig arrived late and assumed that they were a homework assignment. A

by krono 4y ago

Near the beginning of a class, Professor Neyman wrote two problems on the blackboard. Dantzig arrived late and assumed that they were a homework assignment. According to Dantzig, they "seemed to be a little harder than usual", but a few days later he handed in completed solutions for both problems, still believing that they were an assignment that was overdue. Six weeks later, an excited Neyman eagerly told him that the "homework" problems he had solved were two of the most famous unsolved problems in statistics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Dantzig https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Dantzig Reminds me of that :) edit: Here's a slightly more colourful telling of the story: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-unsolvable-math-problem/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-unsolvable-math-proble... Does anyone happen to know which two problems Dantzig solved? Don't seem to be having much luck on my searches

caf 4y ago
There's a lesson there too about how solving problems is often easier once you know it can be solved.
- JadeNB 4y ago
  > There's a lesson there too about how solving problems is often easier once you know it can be solved. Or perhaps when you don't know it can't (yet) be solved.
betamike 4y ago
Hah! This reminded me of a similar story: "In 1951, David A. Huffman and his MIT information theory classmates were given the choice of a term paper or a final exam. The professor, Robert M. Fano, assigned a term paper on the problem of finding the most efficient binary code. Huffman, unable to prove any codes were the most efficient, was about to give up and start studying for the final when he hit upon the idea of using a frequency-sorted binary tree and quickly proved this method the most efficient.[5] In doing so, Huffman outdid Fano, who had worked with Claude Shannon to develop a similar code. Building the tree from the bottom up guaranteed optimality, unlike the top-down approach of Shannon–Fano coding." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huffman_coding#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huffman_coding#History
- dekhn 4y ago
  I took Huffman's class at UCSC and he said he had actually thrown the solution in the garbage before realizing it worked and retrieving it. When we started grad school, one of the professors introduced themself and said they thought it was interesting that adaptive optics was being used in astronomy and maybe the same idea could be used to improve microscopy and 7 years later a new phd was born doing exactly that!
Victerius 4y ago
When I started reading my brain went straight to Von Neumann. Now I really want to read a fanfic about a story where John Von Neumann is invited to a Google interview.
- imglorp 4y ago
  Maybe not Von Neumann at google, but how about Feynman at Microsoft? https://sellsbrothers.com/12395 https://sellsbrothers.com/12395
  - moffkalast 4y ago
    > That statement is a tautology. This is giving me vietnam-style university flashbacks.
  - m463 4y ago
    > We are going to recommend you for immediate hiring into the marketing department. I am reminded of this Feynman story: https://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machine/ https://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machin...
  - JadeNB 4y ago
    > The people authorized to open manhole covers could easily be trained to do it safely. Funny as it is, I would like to think that someone famous for his role in the investigation of the Challenger disaster would never flippantly say that a dangerous situation doesn't matter because "people … could easily be trained to do it safely." The fact that people can be trained to do something properly doesn't mean that trained people won't still sometimes do it improperly.
glandium 4y ago
Over time, some facts were altered, but the basic story persisted in the form of an urban legend and as an introductory scene in the movie Good Will Hunting. Aha, I thought this sounded familiar...
JadeNB 4y ago
Carlo Beenakker answered on MathOverflow (https://mathoverflow.net/a/298601 https://mathoverflow.net/a/298601): > The two problems that Dantzig solved were eventually published in: On the Non-Existence of Tests of "Student's" Hypothesis Having Power Functions Independent of σ (1940) and in On the Fundamental Lemma of Neyman and Pearson (1951).
- krono 4y ago
  Thank you! Spent more time looking for that than I'm willing to admit

by krono 4y ago

caf 4y ago

There's a lesson there too about how solving problems is often easier once you know it can be solved.

JadeNB 4y ago
> There's a lesson there too about how solving problems is often easier once you know it can be solved. Or perhaps when you don't know it can't (yet) be solved.

betamike 4y ago

Hah! This reminded me of a similar story: "In 1951, David A. Huffman and his MIT information theory classmates were given the choice of a term paper or a final exam. The professor, Robert M. Fano, assigned a term paper on the problem of finding the most efficient binary code. Huffman, unable to prove any codes were the most efficient, was about to give up and start studying for the final when he hit upon the idea of using a frequency-sorted binary tree and quickly proved this method the most efficient.[5] In doing so, Huffman outdid Fano, who had worked with Claude Shannon to develop a similar code. Building the tree from the bottom up guaranteed optimality, unlike the top-down approach of Shannon–Fano coding." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huffman_coding#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huffman_coding#History

dekhn 4y ago
I took Huffman's class at UCSC and he said he had actually thrown the solution in the garbage before realizing it worked and retrieving it. When we started grad school, one of the professors introduced themself and said they thought it was interesting that adaptive optics was being used in astronomy and maybe the same idea could be used to improve microscopy and 7 years later a new phd was born doing exactly that!

Victerius 4y ago

When I started reading my brain went straight to Von Neumann. Now I really want to read a fanfic about a story where John Von Neumann is invited to a Google interview.

imglorp 4y ago
Maybe not Von Neumann at google, but how about Feynman at Microsoft? https://sellsbrothers.com/12395 https://sellsbrothers.com/12395
- moffkalast 4y ago
  > That statement is a tautology. This is giving me vietnam-style university flashbacks.
- m463 4y ago
  > We are going to recommend you for immediate hiring into the marketing department. I am reminded of this Feynman story: https://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machine/ https://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machin...
- JadeNB 4y ago
  > The people authorized to open manhole covers could easily be trained to do it safely. Funny as it is, I would like to think that someone famous for his role in the investigation of the Challenger disaster would never flippantly say that a dangerous situation doesn't matter because "people … could easily be trained to do it safely." The fact that people can be trained to do something properly doesn't mean that trained people won't still sometimes do it improperly.

glandium 4y ago

Over time, some facts were altered, but the basic story persisted in the form of an urban legend and as an introductory scene in the movie Good Will Hunting. Aha, I thought this sounded familiar...

JadeNB 4y ago

Carlo Beenakker answered on MathOverflow (https://mathoverflow.net/a/298601 https://mathoverflow.net/a/298601): > The two problems that Dantzig solved were eventually published in: On the Non-Existence of Tests of "Student's" Hypothesis Having Power Functions Independent of σ (1940) and in On the Fundamental Lemma of Neyman and Pearson (1951).

krono 4y ago
Thank you! Spent more time looking for that than I'm willing to admit