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https://terrytao.wordpress.com/ https://terrytao.wordpress.com/

by jameyk 3y ago

pfdietz 3y ago
Tao's blog is quite interesting.
- OldGuyInTheClub 3y ago
  I feel good about myself if I can understand more than the first sentence of any of his posts. Some days I'll even settle for only the first. Great mathematicians are said to be exceptional at visualization. I wonder if the modern greats think in TeX or LaTeX on top of that. It is amazing how fast they post fully-formed, meticulously referenced blog articles or upload preprints.
  - I_AM_A_SMURF 3y ago
    After a while writing LaTeX becomes second nature. I used to type my master's classes notes straight in LaTeX.
    - OldGuyInTheClub 3y ago
      Impressive. I can't think and type fast with accuracy nearly well enough to do that for regular text, let alone a markup/page definition language. Looking back I wish I had continued practicing typing after the one class I took in it. I should also have learned shorthand.
    - ColinWright 3y ago
      Times have changed. We didn't have laptops in classes ... laptops didn't exist. And I wrote my PhD in TeX. Not LaTeX ... that hadn't been invented.
      - dctoedt 3y ago
        > Times have changed ... I wrote my PhD in TeX. Not LaTeX ... that hadn't been invented. Brings to mind when I first learned TOPS-20 Emacs in law school (long story), circa 1980-81: A few of the CS grad students tolerantly looked down on Emacs as a crutch for newbies, because any real programmer would use TECO instead .... (IIRC, that version of Emacs was written as a collection of TECO macros.) Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/378/ https://xkcd.com/378/
      - OldGuyInTheClub 3y ago
        No laptops in my era, either. I managed to do my thesis in LaTeX only because a student in another department made a stylesheet to the expected format. Figures and captions were a struggle back then. But, we were 'appy in them days, though we wuz poor.
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    This post on the cap set problem was fun. https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2016/05/18/a-symmetric-formulation-of-the-croot-lev-pach-ellenberg-gijswijt-capset-bound/ https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2016/05/18/a-symmetric-formul...

https://terrytao.wordpress.com/ https://terrytao.wordpress.com/

by jameyk 3y ago

https://terrytao.wordpress.com/ https://terrytao.wordpress.com/

pfdietz 3y ago

Tao's blog is quite interesting.

OldGuyInTheClub 3y ago
I feel good about myself if I can understand more than the first sentence of any of his posts. Some days I'll even settle for only the first. Great mathematicians are said to be exceptional at visualization. I wonder if the modern greats think in TeX or LaTeX on top of that. It is amazing how fast they post fully-formed, meticulously referenced blog articles or upload preprints.
- I_AM_A_SMURF 3y ago
  After a while writing LaTeX becomes second nature. I used to type my master's classes notes straight in LaTeX.
  - OldGuyInTheClub 3y ago
    Impressive. I can't think and type fast with accuracy nearly well enough to do that for regular text, let alone a markup/page definition language. Looking back I wish I had continued practicing typing after the one class I took in it. I should also have learned shorthand.
  - ColinWright 3y ago
    Times have changed. We didn't have laptops in classes ... laptops didn't exist. And I wrote my PhD in TeX. Not LaTeX ... that hadn't been invented.
    - dctoedt 3y ago
      > Times have changed ... I wrote my PhD in TeX. Not LaTeX ... that hadn't been invented. Brings to mind when I first learned TOPS-20 Emacs in law school (long story), circa 1980-81: A few of the CS grad students tolerantly looked down on Emacs as a crutch for newbies, because any real programmer would use TECO instead .... (IIRC, that version of Emacs was written as a collection of TECO macros.) Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/378/ https://xkcd.com/378/
    - OldGuyInTheClub 3y ago
      No laptops in my era, either. I managed to do my thesis in LaTeX only because a student in another department made a stylesheet to the expected format. Figures and captions were a struggle back then. But, we were 'appy in them days, though we wuz poor.
- pfdietz 3y ago
  This post on the cap set problem was fun. https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2016/05/18/a-symmetric-formulation-of-the-croot-lev-pach-ellenberg-gijswijt-capset-bound/ https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2016/05/18/a-symmetric-formul...