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I agree. They have a breathless tone to them that's quite annoying to me (I work in data compression as an academic, and I found this article uninspiring.) By

by sn41 3y ago

I agree. They have a breathless tone to them that's quite annoying to me (I work in data compression as an academic, and I found this article uninspiring.) By the way, there was an old Soviet magazine called "Kvant" (Russian for Quantum, I think). I do not know Russian, but I have 2 collected volumes of selected articles from them. [1] [2] Their quality is astonishingly good, and high-level. The difference is this: The Kvant articles were written by professional research mathematicians, trying to present their ideas to an audience that were willing to follow them with pencil and paper in hand. Quanta magazine articles are written by journalists trying to present advanced science to a lay audience - the articles are very stilted and present the articles in a tone that oversimplifies the problem and gives no idea about the actual solution, and uses hackneyed tropes like : oh look the solvers were just some random unknown guys (in a recent case, the random unknown guy is a tenured faculty at UCLA in theoretical computer science, apparently "a world away from mathematics" [3]) [1] http://www.iri.upc.edu/people/thomas/Collection/details/56609.html http://www.iri.upc.edu/people/thomas/Collection/details/5660... [2] http://www.personal.psu.edu/sot2/kvant_preface1.pdf http://www.personal.psu.edu/sot2/kvant_preface1.pdf [3] https://www.quantamagazine.org/surprise-computer-science-proof-stuns-mathematicians-20230321/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/surprise-computer-science-pro...

dieselgate 3y ago
Yeah you have a good point - not sure if there’s a name for what you’re referencing but it’s tough to be an expert in something and read a bunch of cringe pop sci articles on your field. This topic comes up frequently with my partner who is a researcher - Ed Yong recently wrote a piece on some work by their lab and it was “tolerable”. Not a huge fan of Quanta myself but Aeon frequently has articles written by researchers/experts and are higher quality in my opinion. Interesting to hear about Kvant!
- notRobot 3y ago
  > "Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know." https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/
fn-mote 3y ago
I think this is an unfair criticism of the Quanta articles. I'll just say up front that I am not an academic, and I enjoy the breadth of coverage in the Quanta articles. I would liken them to science articles in American Scientist. (Perhaps you don't like that either.) Yes, they are popularized, but they are still technical. Are you bored by a description of an algorithm you know well? This article clearly describes the process of Huffmann encoding. It's not one of the most amazing discoveries, but is this topic ever going to be exciting? I'd say it's easier to follow their article than either Wikipedia or the top animation hit [1]. There are two other claims you make that appear baseless. On the first point: > Quanta magazine articles are written by journalists The first bio I checked [2] is a Ph.D. mathematician. If they also write, that does not make them less qualified. I'll grant that the second bio I checked [4] was "only" a journalist, but the third was a professor in a named chair [5]. Just clicking, not searching for examples. On the second point: > oversimplifies the problem and gives no idea about the actual solution In your reference [3], it describes the problem clearly and devotes several paragraphs to what looks like a sketch of a solution. Certainly it outlines the ingredients used. (Search for "To see how they arrived at their new upper limit." and "In their proof [...]".) [1]: https://cmps-people.ok.ubc.ca/ylucet/DS/Huffman.html https://cmps-people.ok.ubc.ca/ylucet/DS/Huffman.html [2]: https://www.quantamagazine.org/authors/erica-klarreich/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/authors/erica-klarreich/ [4]: https://www.quantamagazine.org/authors/kevin-hartnett/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/authors/kevin-hartnett/ [5]: https://www.quantamagazine.org/authors/stevenstrogatz/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/authors/stevenstrogatz/
hgsgm 3y ago
Not everyone who reads the news is a mathematian. Quanta is far better than the programmer / bizhacker / SEO blogs that dominate HN. > “My mind was just blown. Like, wait, have they really done this?” said Sisask, a lecturer at Stockholm University." > Sisask called it “the biggest result in the area for 20 years.” > “Meka and Kelley have sort of leapfrogged all this incremental progress,” said Terence Tao, a prominent mathematician at UCLA. Maybe you're just wrong? I trust the judgement of these people more than yours.
abecedarius 3y ago
I haven't seen Kvant, but it's worth adding that Scientific American up till maybe the mid-80s was also more real than standard pop science. Don't take its current incarnation as much like its past. (I guess the 70s were even better for it, but this is my fuzzy memory of a trove of back issues I went through in the 80s.) That said, from a skim I wouldn't call this particular article standard pop science: it explains an idea/result rather than spending most of its words on periphera, and the subject is not recent news. It does ask less of the reader than an old Sci Am article would, I think.
- the-mitr 3y ago
  > but it's worth adding that Scientific American up till maybe the mid-80s was also more real than standard pop science. glad that someone also shares this opinion, the articles and the art in those two decades was great
gavinray 3y ago
I really enjoyed this article, as someone who didn't finish highschool and is a professional programmer. The Wikipedia entry on Huffman Coding is impenetrable to me, this article was easy to follow.
sn9 3y ago
Quanta articles are usually written by people with at least graduate degrees, if not PhDs in Math/Physics/CS/etc. They're without question one of the highest quality pop science publications around. That you had to reach for an old Soviet magazine from the pre-internet era for anything better only speaks to that.

by sn41 3y ago

dieselgate 3y ago

Yeah you have a good point - not sure if there’s a name for what you’re referencing but it’s tough to be an expert in something and read a bunch of cringe pop sci articles on your field. This topic comes up frequently with my partner who is a researcher - Ed Yong recently wrote a piece on some work by their lab and it was “tolerable”. Not a huge fan of Quanta myself but Aeon frequently has articles written by researchers/experts and are higher quality in my opinion. Interesting to hear about Kvant!

notRobot 3y ago
> "Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know." https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/

fn-mote 3y ago

I think this is an unfair criticism of the Quanta articles. I'll just say up front that I am not an academic, and I enjoy the breadth of coverage in the Quanta articles. I would liken them to science articles in American Scientist. (Perhaps you don't like that either.) Yes, they are popularized, but they are still technical. Are you bored by a description of an algorithm you know well? This article clearly describes the process of Huffmann encoding. It's not one of the most amazing discoveries, but is this topic ever going to be exciting? I'd say it's easier to follow their article than either Wikipedia or the top animation hit [1]. There are two other claims you make that appear baseless. On the first point: > Quanta magazine articles are written by journalists The first bio I checked [2] is a Ph.D. mathematician. If they also write, that does not make them less qualified. I'll grant that the second bio I checked [4] was "only" a journalist, but the third was a professor in a named chair [5]. Just clicking, not searching for examples. On the second point: > oversimplifies the problem and gives no idea about the actual solution In your reference [3], it describes the problem clearly and devotes several paragraphs to what looks like a sketch of a solution. Certainly it outlines the ingredients used. (Search for "To see how they arrived at their new upper limit." and "In their proof [...]".) [1]: https://cmps-people.ok.ubc.ca/ylucet/DS/Huffman.html https://cmps-people.ok.ubc.ca/ylucet/DS/Huffman.html [2]: https://www.quantamagazine.org/authors/erica-klarreich/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/authors/erica-klarreich/ [4]: https://www.quantamagazine.org/authors/kevin-hartnett/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/authors/kevin-hartnett/ [5]: https://www.quantamagazine.org/authors/stevenstrogatz/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/authors/stevenstrogatz/

hgsgm 3y ago

Not everyone who reads the news is a mathematian. Quanta is far better than the programmer / bizhacker / SEO blogs that dominate HN. > “My mind was just blown. Like, wait, have they really done this?” said Sisask, a lecturer at Stockholm University." > Sisask called it “the biggest result in the area for 20 years.” > “Meka and Kelley have sort of leapfrogged all this incremental progress,” said Terence Tao, a prominent mathematician at UCLA. Maybe you're just wrong? I trust the judgement of these people more than yours.

abecedarius 3y ago

I haven't seen Kvant, but it's worth adding that Scientific American up till maybe the mid-80s was also more real than standard pop science. Don't take its current incarnation as much like its past. (I guess the 70s were even better for it, but this is my fuzzy memory of a trove of back issues I went through in the 80s.) That said, from a skim I wouldn't call this particular article standard pop science: it explains an idea/result rather than spending most of its words on periphera, and the subject is not recent news. It does ask less of the reader than an old Sci Am article would, I think.

the-mitr 3y ago
> but it's worth adding that Scientific American up till maybe the mid-80s was also more real than standard pop science. glad that someone also shares this opinion, the articles and the art in those two decades was great

gavinray 3y ago

I really enjoyed this article, as someone who didn't finish highschool and is a professional programmer. The Wikipedia entry on Huffman Coding is impenetrable to me, this article was easy to follow.

sn9 3y ago

Quanta articles are usually written by people with at least graduate degrees, if not PhDs in Math/Physics/CS/etc. They're without question one of the highest quality pop science publications around. That you had to reach for an old Soviet magazine from the pre-internet era for anything better only speaks to that.