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Ramanujan's lost notebook
- paulpauper 2y agoNot expecting too many comments here. These formulas are complicated and it took a single person in the later 20th century to re-derive a good chunk of them.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ykonstant 2y agoIf you are talking about Bruce Berndt, Bruce did not rederive Ramanujan's results alone; he has a big network of collaborators and students who have worked with him, and of course many independent researchers have derived some of his formulas. His books contain all the relevant attributions and history (I talked with him extensively and got some of his classes when I was a phd student in UIUC).
- paulpauper 2y agoyes that is him. Same for Peter Borwein
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Samuel_w 2y ago[dead]
- Der_Einzige 2y agoI’m an atheist, but when Ramanujan claims to derive all of their formulas from god, I ask how we can make it easier for them to listen to god, rather than feel the urge to argue against them.
- jdthedisciple 2y ago[flagged]
- cassepipe 2y agoRight, let's start a cultural flamewar over your personal emotion of the moment. Can't wait for HN to turn into Reddit, can you ?
- sjacob 2y agoPlease don't start mate.
- readthenotes1 2y agoSince Ramanujan is dead, I assumed that he had no interest in arguing with the man and was instead talking about anyone with such inspiration. As an English grammar stickler, of course thou should have said "Why art thou" since the use of "you" in the singular is simply grammatical hooliganism and has no place in polite society.
- schrectacular 2y agoGP is obviously using "them" to refer to the formulas. I understand how it could be confusing; on first pass I too looked back for the first word "them" could be referencing - but GP tricks us by writing out "god" again later in the sentence! Since we know Ramanujan is male and "god" is used again, the only valid noun "them" could be referencing is "formulas".
- viciousvoxel 2y agoThis is a really unnecessarily rude way to call out a minor grammar quibble. The sentence was perfectly understandable. Also, whether you like it or not, it is quite common English (at least in the US) these days to use they/them as third person singular. Perhaps we are slowly losing the distinction between singular and plural the same way we lost it for second person. Language changes.
- jdthedisciple 2y ago
- hi41 2y agoIn the spirit of openness which is the hallmark of FOSS such as GNU/Linux, would this book be scanned and published for all to see? That would be great. Like FOSS, math too belongs to the world. I heard someone say that the university has not published many of his works. That would be sad. If published someone like Terrence Tao could write formal proofs for them like he and his team did some improvements for the work by Yitang Zhang.
- bigbillheck 2y ago> If published someone like Terrence Tao could write formal proofs for them like he and his team did some improvements for the work by Yitang Zhang. From the second paragraph: > George Andrews and Bruce C. Berndt (2005, 2009, 2012, 2013, 2018) have published several books in which they give proofs for Ramanujan's formulas included in the notebook
- svat 2y agoThe notebook (like Ramanujan's three previously known notebooks) has already been published, in 5 volumes by Bruce Berndt and George Andrews, with extensive annotation (e.g. just flipping at random, in the third volume Chapter 6 is called "Theorems about the Partition Function on Pages 189 and 182", and occupies 24 pages, and indeed contains formal proofs etc). A raw scan of the notebook(s) is even available online: http://ramanujan.sirinudi.org http://ramanujan.sirinudi.org
- Analemma_ 2y agoUnfortunately the actual notebook links on that site appear broken
- LegionMammal978 2y agoThe page number selector appears to link to working PDFs.
- svat 2y agoJust enter a page number; it works fine. Or if you wish, here are the direct links: http://ramanujan.sirinudi.org/Volumes/01/01.pdf http://ramanujan.sirinudi.org/Volumes/01/01.pdf http://ramanujan.sirinudi.org/Volumes/02/02.pdf http://ramanujan.sirinudi.org/Volumes/02/02.pdf http://ramanujan.sirinudi.org/Volumes/03/03.pdf http://ramanujan.sirinudi.org/Volumes/03/03.pdf http://ramanujan.sirinudi.org/Volumes/04/04.pdf http://ramanujan.sirinudi.org/Volumes/04/04.pdf Ramanujan's total known/preserved output today is 37 published papers and these four notebooks; all of it is available on the site. The notebooks have been transcribed and published in several volumes with explanation (as mentioned above); those are the only thing not included on this site (and arguably, not "by" Ramanujan).
- interpjinx 2y agoI expect future AI models to be like Ramanujan. Has tremendous intuition but can't accurately explain it's reasoning for arriving at a solution.
- shwaj 2y agoPerhaps this will be true, for the types of insights that also require tremendous intuition for people to see. One difference is that it will be possible to examine the full state of the AI which lead to the insight, and perhaps learn from it. (edit: rewrote to flow a bit better)
- troq13 2y agoIt seems like a misconception that Ramanujan could not explain his reasoning. He did not write it down on his notebooks (and before going to England he mostly lacked the language of formal proofs to do it), but for the most part the equations are arranged in a logical order, and when meeting with Hardy he had no trouble explaining where each equation came from (though a lot of his reasoning was too unrigorous for Hardy's liking).
- ldjkfkdsjnv 2y agoI almost feel like there is a random ramanujan posting generator. Every day it runs on a cron job, and with some probably something about him is posted. Much like the dunning krueger effect. Some topics arise with such consistent regularity. Almost makes you wonder what the reasoning is
- gnatman 2y agoBecause he’s a fascinating and mysterious character on top of being the most brilliant mathematician since Euler.
- mycologos 2y agoOne quarter thought out software project, mild overthinking conspiracy theory, and a non sequitur misspelled reference to Dunning-Kruger. This is like a parody of a Hacker News comment
- gus_massa 2y agoFrom https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=Ramanujan&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... it looks likethere are like 5 or 6 post per year.
- __lbracket__ 2y agocan we please stop spending more ink on this hack?
- pingohits 2y agoWhat's hacky about Ramanujan?
- __lbracket__ 2y agoSo we dont know anything about his math/theorem generation process. By his own admission he saw visions of math/theorem god, which is a BS claim since god doesn't exist. So "god whispered theorems in my sleep" is just a proxy for "I coped it from someone". Many of his so called theorems are false (by Hardy's own admission). Lot of progress in math depends on the "process", not just the end result. But he shares nothing about the process.
- lupusreal 2y ago> By his own admission he saw visions of math/theorem god, which is a BS claim since god doesn't exist Shit reasoning like this from atheists like you is why I cringe to admit I'm an atheist when people ask me about my religious beliefs. It is entirely conceivable that he saw visions of math, produced by his own subconscious, and attributed these visions to a god. It would not be terribly dissimilar from any artist who attributes their creative visions to a muse. Do you accuse any such artist of plagiarism too?
- __lbracket__ 2y agoHe didnt have formal training in math. So where did his subconscious "learn" the advanced stuff in his visions?
- vaidhy 2y agoLacking formal training does not equate cannot understand something. As far as copying something goes, there should have been an equivalent mathematician nearby from whom he can copy, right? Who is it? As an atheist myself, I do not believe in god and I do not believe Ramanujam got it from god. However, it does not change the fact Ramanujan thought he got it from god because he could not necessarily explain how he made those intuitive leaps.
- gwern 2y ago> However, Wilson died in 1935 and Watson seems to have lost interest in the project in the late 1930s.[3] After Watson's death in 1965, J. M. Whittaker examined Watson's papers (which were in disarray, due to be incinerated in a few days) and found Ramanujan's notebook