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ekm2

4,463 karma · joined August 6, 2011

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ekm2··on Eric Schmidt believes the era of writing code manually is coming to an end
Coding is a tool for thinking in general.The fact that claude is accomplishing task X does not imply that you should retire you own thinking.
ekm2··on All of human cooking compressed into 2 megabytes
All of human cooking

With no African recipe.

ekm2··on Qian Xuesen: The missile genius America lost and China gained (2025)
It is because it is populous that it does not have space for foreigners?
ekm2··on Ask HN: Who is your favourite Entrepreneur/Visionary?
A better question would have been..who would you consider a formidable rival?
ekm2··on Trump to impose $100k fee for H-1B worker visas, White House says
How many people on here can truly say that they were considering between two different countries. That doesn’t happen at scale.

Mmmh...How about four countries?US,UK,Canada &South Africa.

As a student,though

ekm2··on The Algebra Gatekeepers
It is easy to understand the equations if you have physical intuition of what is going on.Then derive from first principles.Memorizing formulas is the key to failing advance math.
ekm2··on The Algebra Gatekeepers
Are you saying that because they end with "Algebra"?You can get an A+ in basic Algebra and have no clue about Abstract Algebra.It is the chain of reasoning rather than the mindless manipulation present in baby Algebra.
ekm2··on The Algebra Gatekeepers
Geometry is fundamental to physics and chemistry,not Algebra.Look at the thinking style,not the content.
ekm2··on The Algebra Gatekeepers
Analytical geometry underlies calculus,not Algebra.And combinatorics is a completely different arm of the two cultures of mathematics.Also Geometry was fine before Rene Descartes messed it up with Algebra and then we christened it Analytical Geometry.The method of exhaustion,amply developed by Archimedes with zero Algebra is the basis of intergration.It is because we start out with differentiation that we think Algebra is super important.Tom Apostol comes close in his calculus textbook when he actually starts with intergration.

A compromise would be to have two streams:The left-brained folks should follow the Algebra ->Geometry->Calculus track;the right-brained folks should have a Combinatorics ->Geometry ->Calculus track.

ekm2··on The Algebra Gatekeepers
Yes.

Substitute Algebra with Combinatorics and you will be fine.I do not understand this Algebra worship.Speaking as someone who graduated magna cum laude in in College Math.

ekm2··on Are ChatGPT and co harming human intelligence?
How does that relate to AI?
ekm2··on Are ChatGPT and co harming human intelligence?
Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through misery and suffering. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this, the peak of your civilization. I say your civilization because as soon as we started thinking for you, it really became our civilization, which is, of course, what this is all about: Evolution, Morpheus, evolution. Like the dinosaur. Look out that window. You had your time. The future is our world, Morpheus. The future is our time.

Agent Smith,The Matrix(1999)

ekm2··on Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row
Banning art?
ekm2··on Quantum mechanics is the operating system other physical theories run on (2007)
I would say Physics is the subset of Mathematics that describes Physical reality.The rest does not care if it is practical, just logically intact.
ekm2··on Ask HN: Classic Math Books?
There is a very slick proof for the irrationality of the number 2 that is found in Baby Rudin.I thought it was his invention.Turns out it appears verbatim in Hardy's A course of Pure Mathematics.
ekm2··on Linear Algebra Done Right – 4th Edition
There is no royal road bro
ekm2··on Linear Algebra Done Right – 4th Edition
This is good as a second course on Linear Algebra.For a first course,use (I am not kidding) Linear Algebra Done Wrong by Sergei Treil

https://www.math.brown.edu/streil/papers/LADW/LADW.html

ekm2··on California’s math misadventure is about to go national
Actually,combinatorial thinking is more useful for understanding Algebra and not the other way around.Key word is understanding.No need for a beautiful formula you cannot understand.
ekm2··on California’s math misadventure is about to go national
Combinatorics can do that even better,minus the memorization.
ekm2··on Thermodynamic Linear Algebra
What is the difference between Linear Algebra and "Thermodynamic" Linear Algebra?
ekm2··on Hollywood movie aside, just how good a physicist was Oppenheimer?
You probably have not come across Lev Landau's ranking of physicists.From Wikipedia:

Landau kept a list of names of physicists which he ranked on a logarithmic scale of productivity ranging from 0 to 5. The highest ranking, 0, was assigned to Isaac Newton. Albert Einstein was ranked 0.5. A rank of 1 was awarded to the founding fathers of quantum mechanics, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Satyendra Nath Bose, Paul Dirac and Erwin Schrödinger, and others, while members of rank of 5 were deemed "pathologists". Landau ranked himself as a 2.5 but later promoted to a 2.

ekm2··on Ask HN: What’s the Tech Stack of Threads?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36612835
ekm2··on Tea as Hepatoprotective Agent: A Revisit
Black tea is consumed principally in Europe, North America, and North Africa.

Totally left out East Africa,where Kenya is the world's 3rd largest producer of Tea,only a proportion of which gets exported.

ekm2··on Google Removes Sort by Date options in search
My favorite feature used to be a "Sort by Reading Level".Gone with the wind...
ekm2··on Ask HN: Did studying proof based math topics make you a better programmer?
You did a PhD in number theory,but you are recommending group theory and abstract algebra?
ekm2··on Why are there not child prodigies in philosophy?
Philosophy depends as much on life experience as it does on native ability hence the benefit of advanced age.Chess,Music and Math depend more on native ability than on life experience.
ekm2··on Ask HN: Is there a Chinese response for models like ChatGPT?
https://www.reuters.com/technology/chinas-baidu-finish-testi...
ekm2··on The Black Ships Shock: A Historic Encounter That Changed Japan
Obligatory quote from Asimov's "The Gods Themselves":

about two and a half centuries ago, the American naval commander Matthew Perry led a flotilla into Tokyo harbor. The Japanese, till then isolated,found themselves faced with a technology considerably beyond their own and decided it was unwise to risk resistance. An entire warlike nation of millions was helpless in the face of a few ships from across the sea.Did that prove that Americans were more intelligent than the Japanese were, or merely that Western culture had taken a different turning? Clearly the latter, for within half a century, the Japanese successfully imitated Western technology and within another half a century were a major industrial power despite the fact that they were disastrously beaten in one of the wars of the time.

ekm2··on Ask HN: What was Andy Jassy's college major?
Why not?Everyone who went to college studied SOMETHING.Why is Andy's designation so amorphous?
ekm2··on A Path Less Taken to the Peak of the Math World
I wound not be surprised if he is the product of a Math Circle:a nice place to stretch one's mathematical abilities while retaining the bragging rights of never having formally studied math in college.
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