Re: [math-fun] Another horribly confusing Quanta article
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. 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). -----
The issue is not about you or I. It is about citizen scientists, and whether or not they are being served good information. As someone who has spent a fair amount of time, in class and after, studying rep. theory, I do not feel like the public is well served by this article. Likely they will walk away with misconceptions and wrong ideas. Harter spent his whole career making fun problems about symmetric oscillators, and Quanta doesn’t know and doesn’t care. Instead of a low-value quanta article it is possible to just send an email saying, “Hey, check out this playlist on YouTube”: https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsaDbvh6KgCqWjuXArHDZqi5RhtkzWer7 Many people will learn from it! Cheers, —Brad
On Jun 11, 2020, at 7:17 PM, Dan Asimov <dasimov@earthlink.net> wrote:
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.
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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<< "Representation theory is a way of taking [simple] objects and “representing” them with [more complex] objects." >> Or as Goethe is alleged to have observed "Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them, they translate it into their own language, and forthwith it means something entirely different." Quoted at https://www.math.utah.edu/~cherk/mathjokes.html WFL On 6/12/20, Brad Klee <bradklee@gmail.com> wrote:
The issue is not about you or I. It is about citizen scientists, and whether or not they are being served good information.
As someone who has spent a fair amount of time, in class and after, studying rep. theory, I do not feel like the public is well served by this article. Likely they will walk away with misconceptions and wrong ideas.
Harter spent his whole career making fun problems about symmetric oscillators, and Quanta doesn’t know and doesn’t care.
Instead of a low-value quanta article it is possible to just send an email saying, “Hey, check out this playlist on YouTube”:
https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsaDbvh6KgCqWjuXArHDZqi5RhtkzWer7
Many people will learn from it!
Cheers,
—Brad
On Jun 11, 2020, at 7:17 PM, Dan Asimov <dasimov@earthlink.net> wrote:
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.
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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On Thu, Jun 11, 2020 at 8:44 PM Brad Klee <bradklee@gmail.com> wrote: Harter spent his whole career making fun
problems about symmetric oscillators, and Quanta doesn’t know and doesn’t care.
Who is Harter? (Do you mean Kevin Hartnett, the author of the article?) Jim Propp
Jesus Jim, I mean WILLIAM HARTER, the world famous symmetry expert! During the rush to describe the symmetry of the buckeyball Carbon-60, HARTER was among the first to predict the form of the spectrum, using his knowledge of rep. Theory. He also gave the best description of the Octahedral molecule SF6. He has a lot of friends in math world, but his colleagues know him as a selfless hero who spent his entire life trying to give opportunities to people from less-fortunate circumstances. He is also a co-inventor of the Harter-heighway dragon, which Gosper has posted about on this list repeatedly. There is an argument that he is R. P. Feynman’s best grad. Student. The only possible competition I know of is William Burke or Stephen Wolfram. Instead of emailing me an insult, why don’t you just watch the videos on his YouTube channel? Blessed are the meek. Cheers, Brad
On Jun 11, 2020, at 8:07 PM, James Propp <jamespropp@gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, Jun 11, 2020 at 8:44 PM Brad Klee <bradklee@gmail.com> wrote:
Harter spent his whole career making fun
problems about symmetric oscillators, and Quanta doesn’t know and doesn’t care.
Who is Harter?
(Do you mean Kevin Hartnett, the author of the article?)
Jim Propp _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
BK: "I mean WILLIAM HARTER, the world famous symmetry expert!" Photographer Johnny Wills used to run a Join-In-Daily photography group on Google+ wherein he would supply a theme and his followers would share photographs based thereon. Later, he supplemented his effort with a Join-In-Daily-Specifics theme which, as often as not, was no more specific than the regular theme. After Google+ died he moved the two groups to the MeWe platform where he started a third Join-In-Daily-Music group under the moderatorship of his wife Karen Wills. Folk would share a YouTube video of some piece of music that supposedly fell under the suggested theme. For some time I was part of all three efforts. If nothing else, Join-In-Daily-Music allowed me to create a playlist that I still random-play now and then: http://chesswanks.com/mzk/joinindaily.pdf A year ago, shortly before I left the groups, the theme of Join-In-Daily-Music was "world famous singers, bands, instrumentalist, composers". Three of the entries that were subsequently disputed by Karen Wills were Woody Guthrie, Carl Orff, and Hans Zimmer. When the incredulous submitters defended their entries, Johnny Wills entered the fray and supported his wife's injunctions. In short order, he killed the day's efforts with: "I thought it was quite obvious the type of music I wanted posted for today's theme ... The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Elvis, Elton John, Simon and Garfunkel, Diana Ross, Bach, Beethoven, etc. - but clearly not! So, let's scrap Join In Daily Music for today and we'll resume again tomorrow with something more simple." Ouch.
____________________ < Take a chill pill. > -------------------- \ ^__^ \ (oo)\_______ (__)\ )\/\ ||----w | || || ____________ < Seriously. > ------------ \ ^__^ \ (oo)\_______ (__)\ )\/\ ||----w | || ||
Speaking only for myself, few things make me hotter under the collar than being told to “Chill out”. Funny true story: An ESL teacher I know was horrified when an immigrant to whom she was teaching English boasted about having told his boss to “Chill out”. The teacher said “You don’t talk to your boss like that,” to which her student replied (perfectly idiomatically) “But he was in my face!” Jim Propp On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 12:41 PM Joerg Arndt <arndt@jjj.de> wrote:
____________________ < Take a chill pill. > -------------------- \ ^__^ \ (oo)\_______ (__)\ )\/\ ||----w | || ||
____________ < Seriously. > ------------ \ ^__^ \ (oo)\_______ (__)\ )\/\ ||----w | || ||
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* 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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Is there *any* popular science publication that has good math articles?
Excellent opportunity to fill the niche: there's no competition. So, what is the audience that should be targeted? What kind of articles will this audience read? What do they need? What are their interests? Why should they read this hypothetical publication? Andres.
Hello, there is an excellent column in <Pour la Science> from Jean-Paul Delahaye, hundreds of good articles on mathematics. Here is an archive of these articles : https://www.cristal.univ-lille.fr/profil/jdelahay#page0 langage is french but you can get a translation on the fly from Google. Topics are computation, advanced logic, number theory but these are only 3 subjects, there is plenty of material in (I believe) all interesting subjects of math. Bonne lecture, good reading, Simon plouffe Le sam. 13 juin 2020 à 04:44, Andres Valloud <ten@smallinteger.com> a écrit :
Is there *any* popular science publication that has good math articles?
Excellent opportunity to fill the niche: there's no competition.
So, what is the audience that should be targeted? What kind of articles will this audience read? What do they need? What are their interests? Why should they read this hypothetical publication?
Andres.
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Nice illustrations, too! On 6/12/20 21:32, Simon Plouffe wrote:
Hello,
there is an excellent column in <Pour la Science> from Jean-Paul Delahaye, hundreds of good articles on mathematics. Here is an archive of these articles : https://www.cristal.univ-lille.fr/profil/jdelahay#page0 langage is french but you can get a translation on the fly from Google. Topics are computation, advanced logic, number theory but these are only 3 subjects, there is plenty of material in (I believe) all interesting subjects of math.
Bonne lecture, good reading, Simon plouffe
Le sam. 13 juin 2020 à 04:44, Andres Valloud <ten@smallinteger.com> a écrit :
Is there *any* popular science publication that has good math articles?
Excellent opportunity to fill the niche: there's no competition.
So, what is the audience that should be targeted? What kind of articles will this audience read? What do they need? What are their interests? Why should they read this hypothetical publication?
Andres.
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Delahaye’s column seems very good; I’m just starting to dig in to his article on Langton’s ant. I could do as Simon suggests and use Google translate, but perhaps there is an English language edition of Pour la Science. Does anyone know of one? Jim Propp On Sat, Jun 13, 2020 at 12:34 AM Simon Plouffe <simon.plouffe@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello,
there is an excellent column in <Pour la Science> from Jean-Paul Delahaye, hundreds of good articles on mathematics. Here is an archive of these articles : https://www.cristal.univ-lille.fr/profil/jdelahay#page0 langage is french but you can get a translation on the fly from Google. Topics are computation, advanced logic, number theory but these are only 3 subjects, there is plenty of material in (I believe) all interesting subjects of math.
Bonne lecture, good reading, Simon plouffe
Le sam. 13 juin 2020 à 04:44, Andres Valloud <ten@smallinteger.com> a écrit :
Is there *any* popular science publication that has good math articles?
Excellent opportunity to fill the niche: there's no competition.
So, what is the audience that should be targeted? What kind of articles will this audience read? What do they need? What are their interests? Why should they read this hypothetical publication?
Andres.
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Pour La Science used to be the french edition of Scientific American. Some of Delahaye's articles were translated in S.A. On Sat, Jun 13, 2020 at 4:57 PM James Propp <jamespropp@gmail.com> wrote:
Delahaye’s column seems very good; I’m just starting to dig in to his article on Langton’s ant.
I could do as Simon suggests and use Google translate, but perhaps there is an English language edition of Pour la Science. Does anyone know of one?
Jim Propp
On Sat, Jun 13, 2020 at 12:34 AM Simon Plouffe <simon.plouffe@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello,
there is an excellent column in <Pour la Science> from Jean-Paul Delahaye, hundreds of good articles on mathematics. Here is an archive of these articles : https://www.cristal.univ-lille.fr/profil/jdelahay#page0 langage is french but you can get a translation on the fly from Google. Topics are computation, advanced logic, number theory but these are only 3 subjects, there is plenty of material in (I believe) all interesting subjects of math.
Bonne lecture, good reading, Simon plouffe
Le sam. 13 juin 2020 à 04:44, Andres Valloud <ten@smallinteger.com> a écrit :
Is there *any* popular science publication that has good math articles?
Excellent opportunity to fill the niche: there's no competition.
So, what is the audience that should be targeted? What kind of articles will this audience read? What do they need? What are their interests? Why should they read this hypothetical publication?
Andres.
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Hello , the journal : Pour la Science is officially the english translation of Scientific American. In my opinion, the column of JP Delahaye is among the best, as a <general> journal about science, the level of math is pretty good. As far as I know, in the beginning it was the french version but now the two publications differ a lot. They have a completely different set of people running it. My information is perhaps not accurate. best regards. Simon Plouffe Le sam. 13 juin 2020 à 15:57, James Propp <jamespropp@gmail.com> a écrit :
Delahaye’s column seems very good; I’m just starting to dig in to his article on Langton’s ant.
I could do as Simon suggests and use Google translate, but perhaps there is an English language edition of Pour la Science. Does anyone know of one?
Jim Propp
On Sat, Jun 13, 2020 at 12:34 AM Simon Plouffe <simon.plouffe@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello,
there is an excellent column in <Pour la Science> from Jean-Paul Delahaye, hundreds of good articles on mathematics. Here is an archive of these articles : https://www.cristal.univ-lille.fr/profil/jdelahay#page0 langage is french but you can get a translation on the fly from Google. Topics are computation, advanced logic, number theory but these are only 3 subjects, there is plenty of material in (I believe) all interesting subjects of math.
Bonne lecture, good reading, Simon plouffe
Le sam. 13 juin 2020 à 04:44, Andres Valloud <ten@smallinteger.com> a écrit :
Is there *any* popular science publication that has good math articles?
Excellent opportunity to fill the niche: there's no competition.
So, what is the audience that should be targeted? What kind of articles will this audience read? What do they need? What are their interests? Why should they read this hypothetical publication?
Andres.
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<< Pour la Science is officially the english translation of Scientific American >> Uh-uh --- a dreaded batflu cluster might be popping up on math-fun ... WFL On 6/13/20, Simon Plouffe <simon.plouffe@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello , the journal : Pour la Science is officially the english translation of Scientific American.
In my opinion, the column of JP Delahaye is among the best, as a <general> journal about science, the level of math is pretty good.
As far as I know, in the beginning it was the french version but now the two publications differ a lot. They have a completely different set of people running it. My information is perhaps not accurate.
best regards. Simon Plouffe
Le sam. 13 juin 2020 à 15:57, James Propp <jamespropp@gmail.com> a écrit :
Delahaye’s column seems very good; I’m just starting to dig in to his article on Langton’s ant.
I could do as Simon suggests and use Google translate, but perhaps there is an English language edition of Pour la Science. Does anyone know of one?
Jim Propp
On Sat, Jun 13, 2020 at 12:34 AM Simon Plouffe <simon.plouffe@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello,
there is an excellent column in <Pour la Science> from Jean-Paul Delahaye, hundreds of good articles on mathematics. Here is an archive of these articles : https://www.cristal.univ-lille.fr/profil/jdelahay#page0 langage is french but you can get a translation on the fly from Google. Topics are computation, advanced logic, number theory but these are only 3 subjects, there is plenty of material in (I believe) all interesting subjects of math.
Bonne lecture, good reading, Simon plouffe
Le sam. 13 juin 2020 à 04:44, Andres Valloud <ten@smallinteger.com> a écrit :
Is there *any* popular science publication that has good math articles?
Excellent opportunity to fill the niche: there's no competition.
So, what is the audience that should be targeted? What kind of articles will this audience read? What do they need? What are their interests? Why should they read this hypothetical publication?
Andres.
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* Andres Valloud <ten@smallinteger.com> [Jun 13. 2020 12:17]:
Is there *any* popular science publication that has good math articles?
Excellent opportunity to fill the niche: there's no competition.
So, what is the audience that should be targeted? What kind of articles will this audience read? What do they need? What are their interests? Why should they read this hypothetical publication?
People who would enjoy J.\ M.\ Borwein, P.\ B.\ Borwein: {Ramanujan and Pi}, Scientific American 256, pp.~112-117, (1988). Reprinted (pp.~588ff) in Lennart Berggren, Jonathan Borwein, Peter Borwein, (eds.): {Pi: A Source Book} Springer-Verlag, (1997) Example audience: me, in 1988. Who else? People who had a subscription to the Scientific American back then. People interested in what's going on in science, I guess. Note how the "hard stuff" is printed in boxes, using a slightly smaller font than the running text. Why did they not just keep it that way? This, by the way, could have saved the attempt to popularize the "goldbug" paper I mentioned before. With web-based publication one could even turn those boxes into optional elements, "click here for the scary details"-style. Another example: Martin Gardner: {In which "monster" curves force redefinition of the word "curve"} Scientific American, Mathematical Games, (December-1976) Would it be OK today to include those scary square roots and logarithms? I am afraid todays version would be just images. It's my impression that good articles DID exist and (wild assumption, I know) an audience for them. Today's material (and I must say, quantamagazine.org does a better job than a *lot* of other places) is way to much fancy images with no useful explanation. Best regards, jj P.S. regarding my other ("chill pill") email: Some mild trolling may have been involved.
Andres.
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Back then, I learned a lot from these books (four volumes). Nice to see them at archive.org now. https://archive.org/details/TheWorldOfMathematicsVolume1/page/n1/mode/2up On 6/13/20 04:14, Joerg Arndt wrote:
* Andres Valloud <ten@smallinteger.com> [Jun 13. 2020 12:17]:
Is there *any* popular science publication that has good math articles?
Excellent opportunity to fill the niche: there's no competition.
So, what is the audience that should be targeted? What kind of articles will this audience read? What do they need? What are their interests? Why should they read this hypothetical publication?
People who would enjoy J.\ M.\ Borwein, P.\ B.\ Borwein: {Ramanujan and Pi}, Scientific American 256, pp.~112-117, (1988). Reprinted (pp.~588ff) in Lennart Berggren, Jonathan Borwein, Peter Borwein, (eds.): {Pi: A Source Book} Springer-Verlag, (1997) Example audience: me, in 1988. Who else? People who had a subscription to the Scientific American back then. People interested in what's going on in science, I guess.
Note how the "hard stuff" is printed in boxes, using a slightly smaller font than the running text. Why did they not just keep it that way? This, by the way, could have saved the attempt to popularize the "goldbug" paper I mentioned before. With web-based publication one could even turn those boxes into optional elements, "click here for the scary details"-style.
Another example: Martin Gardner: {In which "monster" curves force redefinition of the word "curve"} Scientific American, Mathematical Games, (December-1976) Would it be OK today to include those scary square roots and logarithms? I am afraid todays version would be just images.
It's my impression that good articles DID exist and (wild assumption, I know) an audience for them.
Today's material (and I must say, quantamagazine.org does a better job than a *lot* of other places) is way to much fancy images with no useful explanation.
Best regards, jj
P.S. regarding my other ("chill pill") email: Some mild trolling may have been involved.
Andres.
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A popularizer of mathematics in the modern age can make use of hyperlinks so that readers who want more details can find them but readers who don't want them won't be distracted by them. Does anyone know of current popularizers of mathematics who've made skillful use of hyperlinks? Jim Propp On Sat, Jun 13, 2020 at 7:59 AM Andres Valloud <ten@smallinteger.com> wrote:
Back then, I learned a lot from these books (four volumes). Nice to see them at archive.org now.
https://archive.org/details/TheWorldOfMathematicsVolume1/page/n1/mode/2up
On 6/13/20 04:14, Joerg Arndt wrote:
* Andres Valloud <ten@smallinteger.com> [Jun 13. 2020 12:17]:
Is there *any* popular science publication that has good math articles?
Excellent opportunity to fill the niche: there's no competition.
So, what is the audience that should be targeted? What kind of articles will this audience read? What do they need? What are their interests? Why should they read this hypothetical publication?
People who would enjoy J.\ M.\ Borwein, P.\ B.\ Borwein: {Ramanujan and Pi}, Scientific American 256, pp.~112-117, (1988). Reprinted (pp.~588ff) in Lennart Berggren, Jonathan Borwein, Peter Borwein, (eds.): {Pi: A Source Book} Springer-Verlag, (1997) Example audience: me, in 1988. Who else? People who had a subscription to the Scientific American back then. People interested in what's going on in science, I guess.
Note how the "hard stuff" is printed in boxes, using a slightly smaller font than the running text. Why did they not just keep it that way? This, by the way, could have saved the attempt to popularize the "goldbug" paper I mentioned before. With web-based publication one could even turn those boxes into optional elements, "click here for the scary details"-style.
Another example: Martin Gardner: {In which "monster" curves force redefinition of the word "curve"} Scientific American, Mathematical Games, (December-1976) Would it be OK today to include those scary square roots and logarithms? I am afraid todays version would be just images.
It's my impression that good articles DID exist and (wild assumption, I know) an audience for them.
Today's material (and I must say, quantamagazine.org does a better job than a *lot* of other places) is way to much fancy images with no useful explanation.
Best regards, jj
P.S. regarding my other ("chill pill") email: Some mild trolling may have been involved.
Andres.
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John Baez has been doing that since 1993. First in This Week's Finds, then on the n-category cafe and on Azimuth, now on Twitter with links to blog posts on various sites. On Sat, Jun 13, 2020 at 6:23 AM James Propp <jamespropp@gmail.com> wrote:
A popularizer of mathematics in the modern age can make use of hyperlinks so that readers who want more details can find them but readers who don't want them won't be distracted by them. Does anyone know of current popularizers of mathematics who've made skillful use of hyperlinks?
Jim Propp
On Sat, Jun 13, 2020 at 7:59 AM Andres Valloud <ten@smallinteger.com> wrote:
Back then, I learned a lot from these books (four volumes). Nice to see them at archive.org now.
https://archive.org/details/TheWorldOfMathematicsVolume1/page/n1/mode/2up
On 6/13/20 04:14, Joerg Arndt wrote:
* Andres Valloud <ten@smallinteger.com> [Jun 13. 2020 12:17]:
Is there *any* popular science publication that has good math articles?
Excellent opportunity to fill the niche: there's no competition.
So, what is the audience that should be targeted? What kind of articles will this audience read? What do they need? What are their interests? Why should they read this hypothetical publication?
People who would enjoy J.\ M.\ Borwein, P.\ B.\ Borwein: {Ramanujan and Pi}, Scientific American 256, pp.~112-117, (1988). Reprinted (pp.~588ff) in Lennart Berggren, Jonathan Borwein, Peter Borwein, (eds.): {Pi: A Source Book} Springer-Verlag, (1997) Example audience: me, in 1988. Who else? People who had a subscription to the Scientific American back then. People interested in what's going on in science, I guess.
Note how the "hard stuff" is printed in boxes, using a slightly smaller font than the running text. Why did they not just keep it that way? This, by the way, could have saved the attempt to popularize the "goldbug" paper I mentioned before. With web-based publication one could even turn those boxes into optional elements, "click here for the scary details"-style.
Another example: Martin Gardner: {In which "monster" curves force redefinition of the word "curve"} Scientific American, Mathematical Games, (December-1976) Would it be OK today to include those scary square roots and logarithms? I am afraid todays version would be just images.
It's my impression that good articles DID exist and (wild assumption, I know) an audience for them.
Today's material (and I must say, quantamagazine.org does a better job than a *lot* of other places) is way to much fancy images with no useful explanation.
Best regards, jj
P.S. regarding my other ("chill pill") email: Some mild trolling may have been involved.
Andres.
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-- Mike Stay - metaweta@gmail.com http://math.ucr.edu/~mike https://reperiendi.wordpress.com
Hi, On 6/13/20 04:14, Joerg Arndt wrote:
People who would enjoy J.\ M.\ Borwein, P.\ B.\ Borwein: {Ramanujan and Pi}, Scientific American 256, pp.~112-117, (1988). Reprinted (pp.~588ff) in Lennart Berggren, Jonathan Borwein, Peter Borwein, (eds.): {Pi: A Source Book} Springer-Verlag, (1997)
Do you know if there's some way to look at this article easily? I found an article online, https://carma.newcastle.edu.au/resources/jon/RAMA125f.pdf but it doesn't follow it's the one in Scientific American.
Note how the "hard stuff" is printed in boxes, using a slightly smaller font than the running text. Why did they not just keep it that way? This, by the way, could have saved the attempt to popularize the "goldbug" paper I mentioned before. With web-based publication one could even turn those boxes into optional elements, "click here for the scary details"-style.
Has anyone asked why they changed? Was there a rationale provided, ever? Andres.
This is a beautiful article, but it doesn’t explain where any of these identities (Ramanujan and successors for \pi) come from. I know this might be a heavy lift, but are there any of these that can be explained on an elementary level, even if non-rigorously? Cris
On Jun 13, 2020, at 1:58 PM, Andres Valloud <ten@smallinteger.com> wrote:
Do you know if there's some way to look at this article easily? I found an article online,
https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fcarma.newcastle.edu.au%2... <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fcarma.newcastle.edu.au%2fresources%2fjon%2fRAMA125f.pdf&c=E,1,tD7fkLZ0jLAfU9Ps1gY77iYKnRglBLV9Lf2amF6it_5gLpiPYSfZK8vl85wvF8EkttpWq3fILTmj7MpS-dWivQXcBNVGGPI0pDXvOJTrqQp2tnM,&typo=1>
Yeah... the article says it continues the story of the Scientific American article (they cite themselves), maybe there's more material there? At least there is some hint of where they come from at least in some of them, conceivably one could use those search terms and the references to find more. On 6/13/20 13:36, Cris Moore via math-fun wrote:
This is a beautiful article, but it doesn’t explain where any of these identities (Ramanujan and successors for \pi) come from. I know this might be a heavy lift, but are there any of these that can be explained on an elementary level, even if non-rigorously?
Cris
On Jun 13, 2020, at 1:58 PM, Andres Valloud <ten@smallinteger.com> wrote:
Do you know if there's some way to look at this article easily? I found an article online,
https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fcarma.newcastle.edu.au%2... <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fcarma.newcastle.edu.au%2fresources%2fjon%2fRAMA125f.pdf&c=E,1,tD7fkLZ0jLAfU9Ps1gY77iYKnRglBLV9Lf2amF6it_5gLpiPYSfZK8vl85wvF8EkttpWq3fILTmj7MpS-dWivQXcBNVGGPI0pDXvOJTrqQp2tnM,&typo=1>
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* Andres Valloud <ten@smallinteger.com> [Jun 14. 2020 07:43]:
Hi,
On 6/13/20 04:14, Joerg Arndt wrote:
People who would enjoy J.\ M.\ Borwein, P.\ B.\ Borwein: {Ramanujan and Pi}, Scientific American 256, pp.~112-117, (1988). Reprinted (pp.~588ff) in Lennart Berggren, Jonathan Borwein, Peter Borwein, (eds.): {Pi: A Source Book} Springer-Verlag, (1997)
Do you know if there's some way to look at this article easily? I found an article online,
https://carma.newcastle.edu.au/resources/jon/RAMA125f.pdf
but it doesn't follow it's the one in Scientific American.
It is not. Just grab the whole "Pi source book" from the usual place https://b-ok.cc/book/2317444/1f1104 (big file: 36MB) May not work from computers sharing a gateway with many others (or if your admin or provider plays police).
Note how the "hard stuff" is printed in boxes, using a slightly smaller font than the running text. Why did they not just keep it that way? This, by the way, could have saved the attempt to popularize the "goldbug" paper I mentioned before. With web-based publication one could even turn those boxes into optional elements, "click here for the scary details"-style.
Has anyone asked why they changed? Was there a rationale provided, ever?
People doing hard stuff allowing people with a degree in "dance your name" making decisions, wrongly assuming the latter know anything? I got a T-shirt with "A Grouchy German is a Sour Kraut!" printed on it, so that is sorted (bought in the US, by the way). I do accept that when giving a talk to a general audience one has to dumb things down a lot. But an article? It can be read as often as needed! Best regards, jj
Andres.
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participants (11)
-
Andres Valloud -
Brad Klee -
Cris Moore -
Dan Asimov -
Fred Lunnon -
Hans Havermann -
James Propp -
Joerg Arndt -
Mike Stay -
Olivier Gerard -
Simon Plouffe