* Dan Asimov <dasimov@earthlink.net> [Jun 12. 2020 17:52]:
I agree that it's not a good article. I'd say very few Quanta articles on math seem good to me — they're so dumbed down that they convey very little information.
Is there *any* popular science publication that has good math articles? I seem to recall that Scientific American at one point forbade formulas (including, I seem to recall, formulas for chemical compounds). What a demented rule! There is no hope to write a meaningful article about any "hard" science for any audience with that rule. There was an article about the "goldbug variations" paper somewhere Original paper: Michael Kleber: {Goldbug Variations}, arXiv:math/0501497 [math.CO], (27-January-2005). http://arxiv.org/abs/math/0501497 The Mathematical Intelligencer, Winter 2005, Volume 27, Issue 1, pp 55-63 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02984814 Turns out the original paper actually (as opposed to the article) tells what actually happens, it is also much more entertaining! I ceased to wonder why non-sciency people often have rather idiotic ideas how science is done: even those genuinely interested and, say, reading popular science mags do just see only nonsense. Best regards, jj
But for that reason I'd never look to a Quanta article to learn much about a field of math.
—Dan
----- If you are trying to learn representation theory, the Quanta article looks to be useless, especially because it only references other Quanta articles (probably with similar problems). -----
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