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Comment by zach | Hacker News Reader

I noticed that Evan O’Dorney’s generals was chaired by Bhargava and this question was asked:

  What is Brauer's theorem?
    [I had no idea and they moved on]

He clearly should have read Bhargava’s generals, where Andrew Wiles asks Bhargava the same question!

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I don't like that question because it asks for recollection of a name, as opposed to taking the theorem "when X is true, then Y is true" and changing the question into the form "when X is true, ____???".

Worst case I've seen of this was when I was in 9th grade and our geometry teacher required us to memorize the chapter and section names of theorems in the book when proving. For example, in our proofs about triangles, we had to write "theorem 12.5" or else we wouldn't get credit on the test, and here 12.5 was the chapter and section number in the particular textbook, which is an utterly useless piece of info.

Of course, the name Brauer is not nearly as useless as a chapter name, but still being familiar with math history probably shouldn't be hard requirement for being a professional mathematician.

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