4 ms·

I bet she could do it. Maybe not in a sentence, but at least the Kakeya problem is easy to understand, so maybe these other things would be explainable by an ex

I bet she could do it. Maybe not in a sentence, but at least the Kakeya problem is easy to understand, so maybe these other things would be explainable by an expert. I would like to see them try at least! fwiw, I feel the same way about biology "Lysing action of the (1,2)b-carotene receptive encephalopathy pathway" type shit.

Onavo 2mo ago
> Lysing action of the (1,2)b-carotene receptive encephalopathy pathway High school biology is enough to get a vague idea of this though.
- nerdsniper 2mo ago
  Right. With a college degree, I understand most of these words. I don’t have a clue about the impact of the research or how it fits into the corpus, but I understand the gist of the article title. Despite my degree being in engineering, which involved 4 semesters of calculus, and 3 other semesters of math, (7 total) I have absolutely no fucking clue what’s going on in the Fields Medal description above. It’s only barely more intelligible than if it had been written in Chinese (which I truly cannot read at all). I genuinely don’t understand it at all. Even words that I think I recognize like “harmonic” or “geometric” are useless to me because the actual terms are “harmonic analysis” and “geometric measure theory” and I have 0% clue what those are. I don’t have to google any of the words in the example biology title.
  - Ar-Curunir 2mo ago
    Did your 7 semesters of calculus include any courses that a math major would take? For example, a single upper-division undergrad level course on probability will expose you to measure theory. Similarly, harmonic analysis is something that you can take as a reasonably good senior in mathematics.
    - nerdsniper 2mo ago
      I took multivariate calculus (I to III), differential equations, statistics, discrete math, and linear algebra. I didn't take those courses you're talking about, but that's my point. I have a top <1% education in math in the nation, maybe top 2-3% of all college grads, and that's not enough to even scratch the surface of the summary.
      - Onavo 2mo ago
        Well, the snobby pure maths folks look down on applied engineering math ;)
      - yablak 2mo ago
        if you took an engineering course that covered fourier transform, z transform, or laplace transform, then you have seen an introduction to harmonic analysis on the circle and the real number line. typically when I see mentions of harmonic analysis together with differential geometry I start thinking of fourier transform on more fancy shapes (on the sphere, for example, the replacements for complex exponentials are called spherical harmonics) my PhD was EE in signal processing and I took some extra math classes at the graduate level, and continue to read some of this for fun and profit. I still cant understand most of the terminology in the fields medal citations. that probably requires a more thorough couple of years of graduate education in mathematics. math is by far the furthest of the sciences in terms of depth of human discovery.
      - BigTTYGothGF 2mo ago
        Harmonic analysis is "just" working with harmonic functions which you have enough background for: f(x,y) is harmonic if f_xx+f_yy=0 (f_xx=2nd partial derivative w/r/t/ x, and so on). Higher dimensions work the same: f_{x1x1} + f_{x2x2} + f_{x3x3}+.... = 0.
      - Ar-Curunir 2mo ago
        Every engineering student in the US takes those courses. I did too. That doesn’t make us top 2-3% of college grads. The stuff you mentioned is first year business for most math undergraduates. You should not expect to know most things in senior level math after taking just first-year math. It’s like expecting to know computational complexity theory, or distributed systems theory, after taking first year CS.
Jach 2mo ago
There's been some new videos uploaded with her and the rest of the prize winners (and the winners of other prizes, like the Gauss Medal): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTPyjR3qmTA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTPyjR3qmTA But after watching them I still don't think they're great for understanding (I'm still mostly confused) but the human-interest aspects of the videos are something.

Onavo 2mo ago

> Lysing action of the (1,2)b-carotene receptive encephalopathy pathway High school biology is enough to get a vague idea of this though.

nerdsniper 2mo ago
Right. With a college degree, I understand most of these words. I don’t have a clue about the impact of the research or how it fits into the corpus, but I understand the gist of the article title. Despite my degree being in engineering, which involved 4 semesters of calculus, and 3 other semesters of math, (7 total) I have absolutely no fucking clue what’s going on in the Fields Medal description above. It’s only barely more intelligible than if it had been written in Chinese (which I truly cannot read at all). I genuinely don’t understand it at all. Even words that I think I recognize like “harmonic” or “geometric” are useless to me because the actual terms are “harmonic analysis” and “geometric measure theory” and I have 0% clue what those are. I don’t have to google any of the words in the example biology title.
- Ar-Curunir 2mo ago
  Did your 7 semesters of calculus include any courses that a math major would take? For example, a single upper-division undergrad level course on probability will expose you to measure theory. Similarly, harmonic analysis is something that you can take as a reasonably good senior in mathematics.
  - nerdsniper 2mo ago
    I took multivariate calculus (I to III), differential equations, statistics, discrete math, and linear algebra. I didn't take those courses you're talking about, but that's my point. I have a top <1% education in math in the nation, maybe top 2-3% of all college grads, and that's not enough to even scratch the surface of the summary.
    - Onavo 2mo ago
      Well, the snobby pure maths folks look down on applied engineering math ;)
    - yablak 2mo ago
      if you took an engineering course that covered fourier transform, z transform, or laplace transform, then you have seen an introduction to harmonic analysis on the circle and the real number line. typically when I see mentions of harmonic analysis together with differential geometry I start thinking of fourier transform on more fancy shapes (on the sphere, for example, the replacements for complex exponentials are called spherical harmonics) my PhD was EE in signal processing and I took some extra math classes at the graduate level, and continue to read some of this for fun and profit. I still cant understand most of the terminology in the fields medal citations. that probably requires a more thorough couple of years of graduate education in mathematics. math is by far the furthest of the sciences in terms of depth of human discovery.
    - BigTTYGothGF 2mo ago
      Harmonic analysis is "just" working with harmonic functions which you have enough background for: f(x,y) is harmonic if f_xx+f_yy=0 (f_xx=2nd partial derivative w/r/t/ x, and so on). Higher dimensions work the same: f_{x1x1} + f_{x2x2} + f_{x3x3}+.... = 0.
    - Ar-Curunir 2mo ago
      Every engineering student in the US takes those courses. I did too. That doesn’t make us top 2-3% of college grads. The stuff you mentioned is first year business for most math undergraduates. You should not expect to know most things in senior level math after taking just first-year math. It’s like expecting to know computational complexity theory, or distributed systems theory, after taking first year CS.

Jach 2mo ago

There's been some new videos uploaded with her and the rest of the prize winners (and the winners of other prizes, like the Gauss Medal): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTPyjR3qmTA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTPyjR3qmTA But after watching them I still don't think they're great for understanding (I'm still mostly confused) but the human-interest aspects of the videos are something.