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The world needs more recognition of good mathematics and mathematicians. Really love the work quantum magazine does on covering mathematics. So many implication
by uptownfunk 3y ago
The world needs more recognition of good mathematics and mathematicians. Really love the work quantum magazine does on covering mathematics. So many implications for the rest of the world.
- mr_mitm 3y agoFor those who don't know, Quanta Magazine is financed by Jim Simons (from Chern-Simons theory) who became known as a very successful hedge fund manager. I just love the idea that he's using a portion of his billions to fund a little non-profit math magazine.
- kwant_kiddo 3y agoit is a shame they don't do physical print through
- cout 3y agoI agree. Quanta is the sort of material I like to read during my morning coffee ritual before I start a day of screen time. Are there any quality print magazines like it? I used to get Physics World a long time ago and have been looking for something in print to scratch that same itch.
- ketanmaheshwari 3y agoCommunication of ACM (CACM) still prints magazines. They are reasonably good quality.
- sn9 3y agoThey actually kinda do have print collections of some of their articles, but in the form of books and not well marketed [0]. [0] https://www.quantamagazine.org/gift-store https://www.quantamagazine.org/gift-store
- uptownfunk 3y agoA physical magazine would be nice. I just print papers out on my printer these days and mark em up with my pen of choice :)
- PartiallyTyped 3y agoThe world could always use more people like that. Something something effective altruism. It doesn't even need to be altruistic. One would expect that out of sheer self-interest, one would look into propelling humanity forward by elevating and liberating as many people as possible, enabling the brightest of our species to solve the hardest problems and elevate humanity. Though accepting that one needs others to solve problems one does not understand, that they play a supporting role, takes a great deal of humility.
- jd116 3y ago[dead]
- throw_pm23 3y agoYeah, Jeffrey Eppstein was also one that funded a lot of science and science journalism. Fuck effective altruism.
- PartiallyTyped 3y agoI don't associate myself with that particular group of people, nor did I in any way condone such behaviour, nor do I support long-termists and so on. My comment was mostly calling out the hypocrisy of some EAs, Long-termists, and the likes. It points out the myopic, self-centered, irrational, and too self-important view, the often exhibited messiah complex, and of course the absence of humility.
- throw_pm23 3y agoYes, apologies, and I didn't mean to sound negative. Unfortunately a lot of nuance gets lost in writing..
- bmitc 3y agoThe issue is that we've setup the system to require people like this, which more often than not exposes us to people the opposite of Jim Simons, like Robert Mercer, Peter Thiel, etc. Instead having a proper tax structure, we rely on altruistic wealthy individuals, which are rare, and mainly get people who want to drive us into libertarian hellscapes.
- lukan 3y agoI suppose for that to happen, the world needs better math lessons in school. Most have allmost traumatic experiences, so they now don't want to know anything about math at all. (I also only started to enjoy math, when I could apply it with programming, before it was not traumatic, but mostly boring, but we also did not cover any fun parts like Mandelbrot etc)
- aaplok 3y agoI'm always very confused by this. Why are maths lessons more traumatic than, say, history or biology or foreign language lessons? I mean learning lists of irregular verbs is not precisely most people's idea of fun. And yet only about maths do people speak with such dramatic language. There must be something beyond what's happening in schools themselves that makes people react this way. I just can't work out what it is.
- lukan 3y agoA language is something where people understand, they can use it in the real world (but french still can also be hated for example). But Math beyond the basics is perceived as unnecessary torture, with no practical use, one has to endure to get a diploma. So yes, my proposal would be to teach it more in a practical, applied way.
- aaplok 3y agoWhat about history? Don't people perceive it as even more unnecessary than maths? Shouldn't we expect to see all sorts of theories on how history should be taught in more practical ways if your explanation is correct? I'm only picking on history or languages as examples. I could have picked literature, or almost anything, really. A lot of what is taught at school isn't necessarily a bunch of super applied skills There are lots of bad teachers in every discipline, and I'm sure that everything could be taught a lot better. I'm still not getting why maths is singled out.
- lukan 3y ago
- billfruit 3y agoThey could have written a better head line and mentioned the name of the mathematician. Leaving the mathematicians name out of the head line is a click bait technique, and tends to devalue the whole article. "Michel Talagrand wins Abel Prize for his work on randomness/stochastic processes" would have been a good headline to have, but they chose theirs deliberately to not reveal the import information at a glance.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jylam 3y agoMaybe credit him in the title would be a good thing to start. In the title, there is neither its name nor the price he won. His nationality is not even mentioned in the article.