My nine most vital maths questions

[CRGreathouse]

Even worse, your post #1 reads like a parody of views concerning mathematics which (to judge from popular literature and newspaper stories of the time) were held by many persons at the beginning of the last century

I'd love it if you would expand on what you think those views were in the early 1900s, either in this thread or a new one. I'm curious, largely because I don't have a feel for this aspect of math history.

I suggest that this thread be locked, but perhaps someone will care to start a new threads on "What are the current top ten popular myths about mathematics?", "What is mathematics, that thou are beauteous?", or even "Numbers: is math propaganda in the national interest?"

I may just start that first thread.

 

[matt grime]

Yes. Is that easier to understand than what I posted (n has a terminating base-b expansion iff rad(b) = rad(n))?

As I don't know what rad of a number is, it is a damn sight easier for me to understand. Though of course I should have read your post more thoroughly.

 

[dron]

Not sure what happened to Chris Hillman's post, but would like to know what he or anyone else thinks of this...

When mathematicians describe a proof as "beautiful" they can mean one of three things:

One, because it is succinct, aerodynamic, and efficient, like a golfer’s stroke.
Two, because it links unexpected lines of thought, like a poet’s metaphor.
Three, because it somehow vanishes into infinity, like the light of the ribs of the branches of the trees of the forest of the planet of the space of the light…

Feel free to be as contemptuously dismissive as you like chaps.

 

[matt grime]

The first two would be reasonable, and are almost the descriptions that occur in the book by Gowers that you initially said didn't contain any answers to your questions. I don't remember him putting in the similes. If you want to get a better understanding of mathematics/mathematicians, then I would say that a mathematician wouldn't have inserted those similes since they don't help to convey anything, and are just as open to interpretation. I can't make any sense out of the last one.

 

[Chris Hillman]

Not sure what happened to Chris Hillman's post

Reportedly someone died laughing while reading it so out of concern for public safety...

Feel free to be as contemptuously dismissive as you like chaps.

That's not funny. Try again

 

[dron]

Do you really want an honest response?

Yes, give me an honest response. I didn't read your deleted post, just saw it quoted - see if you can find a less hilarious way of putting it perhaps?

 

[mongoose]

look up the prime number theorem. it draws a connection between the natural log and the distribution of prime numbers.


also, mathetical beauty doesn't necessarily have to be succinct...at least not to me. i think a lot of beauty can come from the results, even if the process that leads to them is complicated and messy.