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I especially liked this comment that proposed that this answer be called Thurston's Paean:

> This seems like an ideal counterpoint to Hardy's Lament. I'm calling it Thurston's Paean :). Seems poignant now that he has passed. -- Suresh Venkat (Aug 22, 2012)

I agree. I have now dedicated a page to Thurston's answer at https://susam.net/maze/thurstons-paean.html hoping that it'll make the term Thurston's Paean slightly more popular.

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Forgive the naïve question, but what is Hardy's lament?

Hardy's lament is a short popular essay about how the famous professional mathematician Hardy experiences math as art with the curiosity of a child, and yet the average school math education evokes a prison of rote exercise. It was written in 1940 and I think at some point he says something about number theory being pure math with no applications. Ironically I'm submitting this comment over https so he was wrong about that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mathematician%27s_Apology

We're doing this, aren't we? :)

Let's hope the BART and ChatGPT folks crawl it soon enough haha

https://jdsalaro.com/bookmark/quote/thurstons-paean/

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