Classic Math Puzzle Cracked 555
An anonymous reader writes "This is cool - if mind-bending. A century ago, a self-taught math genius from India noticed some patterns in how numbers can be created by adding other numbers. Now a grad student has finished the job showing that the patterns apply to all prime numbers, not just some. There's more on the Indian math guy here."
Srinivasa Ramanujan? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Srinivasa Ramanujan? (Score:5, Insightful)
My thoughts exactly. I wonder, will the next article about relativity reference "some German physics guy"? Or, for that matter, should we be on the lookout for articles about an operating system software codes invented by a Finlandish computer guy?
--MarkusQ
Re:Srinivasa Ramanujan? (Score:2)
Re:Srinivasa Ramanujan? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe it's time that we pulled in Indian editors to /., perhaps they could help push quality up a notch.
Re:Srinivasa Ramanujan? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Srinivasa Ramanujan? (Score:4, Insightful)
[Gets out bullhorn:]
It is very obvious that the submitter was CONSCIOUSLY referring to Ramanujan as "some Indian guy or something, Idontrememberhisname" in a tounge-in-cheek way, a technique frequently used by those of us who possess an actual sense of humor. Please do not be alarmed or otherwise let this information affect your propensity for righteous indignation in the future. That is all.
Re:Srinivasa Ramanujan? (Score:5, Funny)
This will in turn reduce productivity in India so much that America becomes competitive again! Brilliant!
Re:Srinivasa Ramanujan? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Srinivasa Ramanujan? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it was a reference to the Bill Nye story posted earlier. Poor taste, maybe, but will everybody stop being offended all PC like?
Re:Srinivasa Ramanujan? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Srinivasa Ramanujan? (Score:3, Insightful)
Does this remind anyone of Bill and Ted's? (Score:5, Insightful)
and:
"If I was a short French dude from the past where would I go?"
Re:Srinivasa Ramanujan? (Score:3, Informative)
You mean Finnish?
Or, well, you know... this is Slashdot. I guess Finlandish is close enough.
Re:Srinivasa Ramanujan? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Srinivasa Ramanujan? (Score:5, Insightful)
Most
Also, the fact that the link to the bio was included seems to indicate that "anonymous reader" does know and care who "the Indian math guy" was.
I apologize in advance for the following rant:
The sad thing is that much of readership of
Re:Srinivasa Ramanujan? (Score:3, Insightful)
Thats like saying when someone types in all capitals its purposefully to help understanding and spark interest.
You don't say "That MIT guy" or "That English guy in the wheelchair" just to help understanding. It verges on the disrepectful.
If you want to spark interest do it on his work/his merit. Not on his nationality.
Re:Srinivasa Ramanujan? (Score:3, Insightful)
To demonstrate the ability to have nearly the exact same summary, without the dumbing down I present you an alternative, the extra two words bolded for emphasis.
Re:Srinivasa Ramanujan? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Srinivasa Ramanujan? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Srinivasa Ramanujan? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Srinivasa Ramanujan? (Score:5, Interesting)
There was another genius like this, only he was a musical genius. There was an African-American slave in the mid-1800's who could play nearly anything on the piano after hearing it once or twice. He was a 'field slave', not a 'house slave'. He used to sneak up to the plantation manor house and listen to visiting musicians play Bach and Mozart on the piano. He was caught one night playing Bach on piano in the manor house and only escaped being whipped to death by his unbelievable talent. He also had the ability to sit down at the piano and play any chord that someone else had just played. He could do by ear.
His 'master', the plantation owner, took him on concert tours around the US, even to the North where this black genius was not a legally-owned slave and would have been able to receive politcal asylum and freedom. But he always returned to the plantation with the 'master', as he was illiterate and uncomfortable among the northern wealthy gentry.
I know that this guy existed; he was a genius whose type of talent appears only in one of ten million people, but I have no idea what his name was. Maybe some Slashdotters who are seriously into African-American musical history could let us know.
Re:Srinivasa Ramanujan? (Score:3, Informative)
Srinivasa Ramanujan was NOT Blind Tom (Score:3, Informative)
Better example of unexpected genius (Score:4, Interesting)
Mir Sultan Khan arrived in England in 1929 as manservant to an Indian Maharaja, and immediately took the European chess world by storm (the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] compares him to Morphy). He convincingly defeated all the great players of that era -- Alekhine, Capablanca, Euwe, Rubenstein, more, but when the American master Reuben Fine visited the maharaja's digs in London, Khan was the waiter who served the meal. In 1933, the maharaja left England and Khan was taken back to India: no more tournament chess for him.
His story is not the same as the story of Blind Tom, in spite of cetain similarities. There is no indication that Khan's owner/employer exploited those remarkable talents, and the talents were in fact measurably remarkable. In the case of Blind Tom, one is tempted to think of S. Johnson's remark: "Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all." [from Boswell's Life of Johnson]
Blind Tom (Score:3, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Tom
Re:Srinivasa Ramanujan? (Score:2)
However, it is also proof that outsourcing is nothing new.
Re:Don't kid yourself. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Don't kid yourself. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Don't kid yourself. (Score:4, Insightful)
That said, my guess is that the poster had copied the URL of the story and couldn't remember how to spell Ramanujan, and just used some shorthand which came off as a slight where one wasn't intended. The myriad of inevitable offshoring jokes are much more offensive than the (correct if somewhat lame) description of Ramanujan as an "Indian math guy."
Good Will Hunting (Score:4, Informative)
If you took number theory or some high level mathematics courses and never heard about Srinivasa Ramanujan it would be akin to studying relativistic physics and never hearing about Albert Einstein .
Most people probably heard about Ramanujan recently from the movie "Good Will Hunting" [imdb.com]. Where they refer to Ramanujan by name several time during the movie, although they totally butchered his name and made me cringe every time they said it. The movie is based on a Ramanujan type character, in Hollywood fashion though. Where a young good looking confidant and outgoing Matt Damon with the physique of a construction worker plays the math genius. Ramanujan was shy, introvert, awkward and not in the best physical health.
Re:Good Will Hunting (Score:4, Insightful)
If you took number theory or some high level mathematics courses and never heard about Srinivasa Ramanujan it would be akin to studying relativistic physics and never hearing about Albert Einstein
Not true. I am a math PhD, but none of my profs ever mentioned Ramanujan to me. Hofstadter's Gödel-Escher-Bach devotes a chapter to Ramanujan, as do several other other popular science books, but it is more for the good story than for his actual merits.
Becoming a grandmaster requires talent and guidance. Ramanujan had great talent but no proper guidance and as a result the product of his tragic life is mostly curiosities and anecdotes. He has some good results, but there is no comparison between him and people like Pierre Fermat or Albert Einstein who single-handedly created new branches of science.
Re:Don't kid yourself. (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny that your parochial flamebait happens to be true. Ramanujan was definitively smarter than either of them.
Not to put down Big Al, but he only had a small armful of memorable discoveries spread over the decades of his career. OTOH, Ramanujan pumped out astonishingly brilliant stuff pretty much every day of his sadly brief adult life.
Re:Don't kid yourself. (Score:5, Informative)
You are kidding, right? Sure, as Einstein grew older, he produced less and less, but here's what he did in 1905 alone:
"A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions" (Einstein's doctoral dissertation) (30 April 1905)
Buchdruckerei K. J. Wyss, Bern, 1906.
Also: Annalen der Physik, 19(1906), pp. 289-305.
This is Einstein's doctoral dissertation, submitted after much delay to the University of Zurich. In it he uses available physical data on the diffusion of sugar in solution and the effect of dissolved sugar on the solution's viscosity to determine the size of sugar molecules and Avogadro's number. The analysis makes the kinetic theory of heat more definite, in so far as it provides a measure of the real size of molecules, so that they cannot be dismissed as easily as useful fictions. It is the least impressive of Einstein's work of 1905 although, curiously, the most cited.
"On the motion of small particles suspended in liquids at rest required by the molecular-kinetic theory of heat." (Brownian motion paper) (May 1905; received 11 May 1905)
Annalen der Physik, 17(1905), pp. 549-560.
In this paper Einstein reports that the kinetic theory of heat predicts that small particles suspended in water must execute a random motion visible under the microscope. He suspects this motion is Brownian motion but has insufficient data to affirm it. The prediction is a powerful test of the truth of the kinetic theory of heat. A failure to observe the effect would refute the theory. If it is seen and measured, it provides a way to estimate Avogadro's number. The domain in which the effect is observed is one in which the second law of thermodynamics no longer holds, a disturbing result for the energeticists of the time.
"On the electrodynamics of moving bodies" (special relativity) (June 1905; received 30 June 1905)
Annalen der Physik, 17(1905), pp. 891-921.
Einstein develops the special theory of relativity in this paper. His concern, as he makes clear in the introduction, is that then current electrodynamics harbors a state of rest, the ether state of rest, and the theory gives very different accounts of electrodynamic processes at rest or moving in the ether. But experiments in electrodynamics and optic have provided no way to determine which is the ether state of rest of all inertial state of motion. Einstein shows that Maxwell-Lorentz electrodynamics has in fact always obeyed a principle of relativity of inertial motion. We just failed to notice it since we tacitly thought that space and time had Newtonian properties, not those of special relativity.
"Does the inertia of a body depend on its energy content?" (E=mc2) (September 1905; received 27 September 1905) Annalen der Physik, 18(1905), pp. 639-41.
Written as a brief follow-up to the special relativity paper, this short note derives the inertial of energy: all energy E also has an inertia E/c2.
"On a heuristic viewpoint concerning the production and transformation of light." (light quantum/photoelectric effect paper) (17 March 1905)
Annalen der Physik, 17(1905), pp. 132-148.
While the victory in the 19th century of the electromagnetic wave theory of light over Newton's corpuscle view is undeniable, Einstein shows that its success is incomplete. The theory gives incorrect results for the analysis of heat radiation. He looks at the thermodynamic properties of high frequency heat radiation and finds that this radiation behaves just like a collection of many spatially localized units ("quanta") of energy of magnitude hf (h=Planck's constant, f=frequency). He proceeds to show how this quantum view of light makes sense of several experiments in electrodynamics and optics, the best know being the photoelectric effect. He then described the paper as "revolutionary."
And these were on wildly different apsects of physics -- Brownian motion, Relativity, Statistical Mechanics, Photoele
Re:Don't kid yourself. (Score:4, Interesting)
I wouldn't want to put him down.
But I agree that Ramanujan was a phenomenon. He was so completely different from any of his contemporary mathematicians that there is really no comparison.
He was discovered by the west when he sent a manuscript to Hardy, a famous English mathematician. Hardy almost discarded it, since much of it was stuff he had seen before (though Ramanujan had rediscovered it independently), but it also contained 120 thereoms no one but Ramanujan had ever seen before.
Later, when he came to England, Ramanujan filled notebooks with thousands of theorems, though not, apparently with proofs. I think proving Ramanujan's thereoms is still a major occupation of academia.
Interestingly, there is a similar story involving Einstein. Bose, who was an unknown Indian physics instructor, sent an unsolicited manuscript to Einstein which eventually led to the theory of Bose statistics, or Bose-Einstein statistics and the Bose condensate.
Crackpots from all over the world were sending Einstein manuscripts, and Bose's manuscript looked a lot like one of these. But Einstein read it anyway, and saw that Bose's ideas had merit. Ultimately, it seemed that Bose only had the one really good idea in him, and after collaborating with Einstein on the one paper, he went back to India and continued teaching. Apparently he was an especially good teacher.
MM
Re:Don't kid yourself. (Score:3, Insightful)
Mycroft
Re:Don't kid yourself. (Score:3, Insightful)
Only on Slashdot would there be a dude who argues that _Einstein's_ number of discoveries was mediocre
Relative to other geniuses, of course... *ow!*
Cheers
Stor
Re:Don't kid yourself. (Score:3, Funny)
"Never underestimate the power of the [fans]."
Elvis is a good example of the strange things people will do for a dead guy. (Except, he's not really dead, right?)
Re:The really annoying part. (Score:5, Informative)
I just moused over, and it's in the freaking URL.
Re:Srinivasa Ramanujan? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Incest? (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's not use real names or give any credit. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Let's not use real names or give any credit. (Score:3, Funny)
You'd have had more street cred ... (Score:3, Funny)
ramanujan (Score:5, Informative)
Also at physorg [physorg.com].
It all deals with the Partition function [wolfram.com].
Ramanujan Biography (Score:5, Informative)
It's really interesting. Ramanujan was doing all this brilliant number theory on his own in India, and he decided to start sending his ideas around. He contacted several brilliant mathematicians, none of whom could figure out what he was talking about, largely because Ramanujan had some peculiar ways of expressing things. Finally Ramanujan contacted G. H. Hardy (at Cambridge), who saw his potential. Hardy invited Ramanujan to come to Cambridge right away, but couldn't get him to come because Ramanujan was a devout Hindu, and felt that he would be permanently "polluted" were he to leave India. Eventually, Ramanujan came to an agreement with his mother and went to spend time with Hardy, who spent a great deal of time helping Ramanujan convert his raw ideas into a more traditional, presentable form for maths journals. Ramanujan had a tough time in Cambridge, because he really didn't fit in. Eventually, he became very sick (tuberculosis, I think), and died. My understanding is that serious mathematicians are continuing to gather many new ideas in number theory from Ramanujan's notebooks, which are published by Springer-Verlag [amazon.com].
Interesting (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Interesting (Score:2)
Why is this important to us? (Score:4, Informative)
Mathematicians ALWAYS say that (Score:2)
Now, instead of becoming a math professor, I've been writing software for 20+ years, and about the only math I've found useful is of the "0xa + 6 = 0x10" variety. (And yes, I know that some math is useful.)
Know your math department (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, then don't go to the Pure Math department when you're asking questions about Applied Math! Don't go to the C&O department, and ask about Statistics, and don't go the Actuary Science department, and ask about Accounting! Yes, they're all within the Math Faculty, but you have to pick your department correctly, or you won't get the answers you want! Sheesh! You wouldn't go to a French professor, and get all annoyed that they didn't speak ancient greek, would you? They're in the Arts Faculty, but Ancient Greek belongs to the Classical Studies department, and French belongs to Romance Languages department.
There is a lot of mathematics out there with real world applications: modeling for physics and engineering, non-linear statistical methods for stock market analysis, all sorts of new crypographic methods and applications, graphical rendering engines; tons of stuff.
Typically, pure math is far in advance of real-world applications: most of the mathematics we use today had no "real world" application when it was first concieved of. Field theory was considered "useless" when it was created, but it forms the heart of both modern cryptography, and of error correcting codes. These two, in turn, have become crucial to the success of our banking and telecommunications industries.
New insights into eliptic curves are yielding a new form of cryptography; the discrete logarithm problem forms the basis of another. Ten years ago, quantum computing was a matter of purely speculative mathematics; today, it exists as an experimental science.
Imaginary numbers were so named because no one figured they had real world uses: today, they're taught as a practical matter for electrical engineers to use in their electronics calculations. Taylor series approximations take the guesswork out of sin and cosine calculations, polynomial interpolation techniques allows computation of a "curve of best fit" for arbitrary scientific data, and every modern engineer is now aquainted with Fourier's transform. Some of Benoit Mandlebrot's notions about fractals were used to create JPEG compression, in common use on the Internet. Wavelet theory is currently being developed to attempt to improve on current methods.
Math is pushing ahead very fast; the real reason you don't usually see it is because it's often right at the heart of things; deep inside our hashing algorithms, hidden in a cryptography library, working behind the scenes as the statistical underpinnings of a successful greylist design that keeps spam away. It's in the boolean algebras that were used to design an efficient circuit layout, and in the iterative methods used to compute a new airfoil design. It's everywhere.
--
AC
Re:Know your math department (Score:5, Informative)
Gauss [wikipedia.org] did quite a lot of things in math, but inventing imaginary numbers was not one of them. These numbers were known long before him and their name was coined by Rene Descartes, as a quick glance at wikipedia [wikipedia.org] would reveal. Incidentally, Descartes named the numbers imaginary exactly because he did not believe they could "exist."
Gauss was french
Gauss was one of the greatest german mathematicians, my friend.
Re:Know your math department (Score:3, Interesting)
"The term was coined by René Descartes in 1637 in his La Géométrie and was meant to be derogatory: obviously, such numbers were thought not to exist."
This statement does not give him enough credit.
The word has been misstranslated.
Imaginaire
Of the mind, or
Image-less
Invisible
Vision less
He described them this way because they could not be plotted using his cartesian coordinate system, not because they obviously didn't exist. He used them, and new b
True story (I may post it again sometime) (Score:4, Funny)
The applicant gave a very interesting presentation. I got lost during the first 5 minutes when he was still giving background, but it was still interesting. His presentation was on - assuming that I remember any of the very little that I may have understood - some specific behaviors of the infinite boundaries of n-dimensional manifolds.
The best part was when he said, "In case you think that this is just esoteric and 'out there,' I want you to know that this stuff has real applications in topology."
There were about 6 other grad students and 15 math faculty there and I think I was the only one to notice how funny that was, so I'm sorry if you don't get the joke.
Re:Why is this important to us? (Score:3, Informative)
Relations were just an obscure mathematical area until Codd came along.
I'm sure there are plenty of other examples...
Re:Why is this important to us? (Score:5, Interesting)
Compression algorithms map one huge number (consider an entire file as one huge number) to another. They "work" because most huge numbers of interest in a given domain aren't valid; random ASCII is gibberish, not English, so we remap that "random" looking stuff to stuff of more interest. This allows us to pack the interesting things much more tightly into the small numbers.
But for every number we shorten, we must also lengthen a number. Real-world algorithms do clever things to minimize the real-world impact of this fact, so you don't see it, but it's obvious if you think about it. If you have a sequence "1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10" which maps back to 1-10, for every number you pull down (move 8 -> 2), another number moves up.
No matter what you do, you can't create a magical compression algorithm that can be the "DNA" of all other numbers. You didn't say this directly, but a lot of people have this idea floating around in their head and I sort of "smell" it in your post.
(Proof: Suppose you have a compression algorithm that always shortens a number, and the corresponding decryption function. (Note we don't assume anything about the nature of the algorithm other than the compression, so it applies to all such algorithms, no matter how fancy the math.) Of the binary numbers 00, 01, 10, 11, each is therefore shortened to 1 bit. But there are only two possibilities for that one bit, and it has to cover 4 numbers. This is not possible for a decompression function by definition of "function". Therefore, contradiction, and there is no such compression algorithm.
I left the terminology a little fuzzy to try to prevent Math Overload; mathematicians should be able to fill in the blanks fairly easily.)
Re:Why is this important to us? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why you can't keep compressing a computer file and why no system of compression can compress every file.
The most important thing to remember here is that computer files are j
Re:Why is this important to us? (Score:3, Insightful)
If I say nothing, assume 00
If I say 0, assume 01
If I say 1, assume 10
If I say 01, assume 11
Assuming a uniform distribution of the message, you can expect 1 bit of data to be transmitted.
However, this is a fake example. Given an information channel I need to define lots of things like what I am using to represent 0 and 1 and how often signals are expected.
Say I have a telegraph wire. Each second I transmit a short signal (dot
Vaguest post I've ever seen (Score:5, Informative)
That's got to be the worst write up I've ever seen on /.
This statement implies that the genius is famous because he noticed that there is/are pattern(s) in how you can add up numbers to get other numbers . . . that statement is so vague that the discovery could be incredible or intuitively obvious.
Quoted from one of the links is a much better explanation below:
One remarkable result of the Hardy-Ramanujan collaboration was a formula for the number p(n) of partitions of a number n. A partition of a positive integer n is just an expression for n as a sum of positive integers, regardless of order. Thus p(4) = 5 because 4 can be written as 1+1+1+1, 1+1+2, 2+2, 1+3, or 4. The problem of finding p(n) was studied by Euler, who found a formula for the generating function of p(n) (that is, for the infinite series whose nth term is p(n)xn). While this allows one to calculate p(n) recursively, it doesn't lead to an explicit formula. Hardy and Ramanujan came up with such a formula (though they only proved it works asymptotically; Rademacher proved it gives the exact value of p(n)).
Re:Vaguest post I've ever seen (Score:3, Funny)
MSFT has just submitted a software patent on
adding numbers together, based upon this f(n).
The number 7(TM) has been brought to you by MSFT.
Alteranative Text (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Alteranative Text (Score:2, Informative)
Dissappointing (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought this was news for nerds, sure maybe not everyone knows who Ramanujan was, but a good proportion should, at least enough that you don't have to demean him with a vague description.
Re:Dissappointing (Score:5, Insightful)
Seemed disrespectful to me - specially for a guy who's probably brighter than 99% of anyone in
Ramanujan was one of the greats of mathematics. (Score:5, Informative)
I believe that the American Mathematical Society wrote up a nice review of his lost or last notebook a few years ago.
Re:Dissappointing (Score:4, Interesting)
IMO:
He could not have worked in India. He needed a lot of personal tutoring and contact with first-rate mathematicians, and there haven't been many mathemeticians as first-rate as G. H. Hardy.
Whether the early death was worth (to the world or to Ramanujan) the growth (to math, to Ramanujan, and to Hardy) that came from the Ramanujan-Hardy collaboration, I don't know.
yeah (Score:4, Funny)
yeah, I saw that too. Like, how if you have a 4, and add a 1, you get a 5. It's pretty cool.
meth (Score:4, Funny)
ah crank [wikipedia.org].. is there anything it cant do?
Na-hee-na-na-jar (Score:5, Funny)
It's not that difficult."
"Yeah, well at least your name isn't Michael Bolton."
Re:Na-hee-na-na-jar (Score:4, Funny)
Discoverer? (Score:5, Interesting)
It is interesting that the New Scientist article basically attributes the idea of studying number partitions to Ramanujan, yet the linked article on him mentions that Euler had studied the problem before, and given a partial solution...
Obilgatory story (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember once going to see him when he was lying ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi cab number 1729 and remarked that the number seemed to me rather a dull one, and that I hoped it was not an unfavorable omen. "No," he replied, "it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways."
(London 1940).
Re:Obilgatory story (Score:5, Informative)
9^3 + 10^3 = 729 + 1000 = 1729
Re:You forgot: (Score:3, Funny)
But if we use negative integers, 1729 gets trumped by 0, since x^3 + (-x)^3 = 0 for all integers.
Re:Obilgatory story (Score:4, Funny)
by uniqueCondition (769252) on Tuesday March 22, @07:45PM (#12018209)
GH Hardy (he wrote A Mathematician's Apology) speaking of Ramanujan:
I remember once going to see him when he was lying ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi cab number 1729 and remarked that the number seemed to me rather a dull one, and that I hoped it was not an unfavorable omen. "No," he replied, "it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways."
(London 1940).
A funny co-incidence happened about 10 years ago that brought this story to mind when I moved back from A2 to Detroit. Our new phone number ended in 1729. Of course my GF complained that it would be hard to remember since it was such an un-interesting phone number!
Re:Obilgatory story (Score:3, Interesting)
Slashdot rules... (Score:2)
How incredibly sad (Score:5, Insightful)
Russell (Score:5, Informative)
The coolest reference on Hardy's reaction to Ramanujan's initial letter is seen in a letter that was sent by Bertrand Russell to an acquaintance. It goes something like:
"Saw Littlewood and Hardy in a considerable state of excitement. They claim to have discovered a second Newton, a Hindu clerk working in Madras for 20 pounds a year...It's all secret now, of course. I feel excited to know this"
From: Ramanujan: Letters and Commenary
Bruce C. Berndt and Robert L. Rankin.
American Mathematical Society-London Mathematical Society.
Numbers were there before the big bang (Score:5, Funny)
Mystery Illness? (Score:5, Informative)
He didn't die from a "mystery illness", he died from tuberculosis (or as it was called back then, the consumption).
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
(I think you get the point)
Don't forget Pi... (Score:5, Informative)
That's the first thing I thought of when I saw the article text, and I was kind of disappointed it wasn't about that particular aspect of Ramanujan.
"Indian math guy"?!?! (Score:3, Insightful)
News for nerds indeed. The man is one of the most well-known mathematicians there is (as much as a mathematician can be well known). The guy even has a number named after him, 1729 [wikipedia.org].
That article also has a lot of fun Futurama references too.
Indian math guy!?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just scratching the surface... (Score:3, Interesting)
If numbers are human constructs and nothing "inherant" in the universe, then the patterns that we find are not that unexpected. Humans are pattern hunting machines.
Wow, numbers can be created adding other numbers (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe that anonymous reader should've freed himself from the mindbended state briefly and taken the few extra seconds to specify "numbers" for the benefit of the readers.
some guy??????? (Score:4, Insightful)
Have some decency. Recognize genius and respect it. What have you accomplished? Even 1/10th of what any respected scientist has? Don't you expect people to call you by your name and not "hey you"? Why not give the same respect to others?
I'm also surprised that the Slashdot editors let this story be published without correcting it!! What, are story submissions now governed by a perl script?
RANT OFF.
Re:some guy??????? (Score:3, Funny)
Unlikely.
I, for one, have considerable confidence that a fairly simple perl script could at least competently produce basic English spelling and grammar.
Cryptography? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:You could at least use his name in the article (Score:2, Funny)
Re:You could at least use his name in the article (Score:2)
Re:You could at least use his name in the article (Score:4, Funny)
Re:You could at least use his name in the article (Score:3, Funny)
Pakistan not nurturing at all. (Score:3, Informative)
Not really. It only works if you are Muslim and male there. Pakistan actually has laws which include rape as a punishment for women, and the system also encourages killing of non-Muslims by specifically (in the code of law) making the killing of a non-Muslim a minor crime compared to the killing of a Muslim. I can provide links to both horrific laws if you want. That is not very intellectual or nurturing. Islam h
Re:Pakistan not nurturing at all. (Score:2)
1. Has a government that burns surplus food bought by government subsidies rather than distribute it to the poor because subsidy laws make it illegal for the government to redistribute food below minimum set controlled prices. 2. Legally forces people to work to pay off the debts accrued by previous gen
I don't have a bias against Muslims. (Score:2, Flamebait)
So, do you think that opposition to forced Islam means opposition to Islam in general? Then there is the unjustified aggression and occupati
Your troll might make sense (Score:3, Insightful)
"What a complete joke of a post, rape as a punishment? What are you waffling about? Are you so blind that you believe everything you hear on TV?"
What does TV have to do with this? I read this from Pakistani sources. Even the Pakistani "patriot" who posted the parent item knows about it.
"Obviously, there is a war going on with the Muslims right now, obviously, negative propaganda about them will be encouraged."
"Propaganda" defined by you as in
Re:Well said. (Score:2)
Just remember the dying words of Uncle Sandeep
"With great curry comes great responsibility!"
Re:What's in a name? (Score:5, Insightful)
The summary didn't name Karl Mahlburg, the subject of the article, either.
Also suggests a low number of Indian maths guys (Score:4, Interesting)
India has a very long history of mathematics. eg. Pythagoras theorom was proven in India long before Pythagoras was even born.