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I’m glade to know that “did a PhD in maths six years ago and work in applied mathematics” is now being long out of math. I see clickbaity titles are still doing

• distcs 4y ago
  To be fair, results like this are very improbable to come from someone who is not a full-time mathematician. And no that does not mean someone working in machine learning or someone who did their PhD 6 years ago. How many such results do you see from someone who is not a full-time mathematician? It is possible for someone who is not a full-time mathematician by still working on mathematics in their spare time or in a mathy-field in their day job but very very few real examples of that can be found. So I don't find the title clickbaity. It is really really hard to come up with results like this without working on mathematics research (not AI research) 10 hours a day!
  • jamincan 4y ago
    The article also notes that other mathematicians very quickly advanced his work from 10% to 38% and wondered why he hadn't just done it himself, since it was relatively simple. He explained that his skills were rusty after being out of mathematics for six years.
  • jebarker 4y ago
    Totally agree. I did a PhD in Pure Math. 6 years later I could no longer give anything but a superficial explanation of my own thesis. Now ~15 years later my thesis is totally impenetrable to me. Advanced math is a house of cards that quickly falls if you're not actively reinforcing it.