[HN Gopher] How I learned to love and fear the Riemann Hypothesis
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       How I learned to love and fear the Riemann Hypothesis
        
       Author : pseudolus
       Score  : 169 points
       Date   : 2021-01-05 12:43 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.quantamagazine.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.quantamagazine.org)
        
       | credit_guy wrote:
       | The video is great.
       | 
       | But it fails on two counts. One is that it doesn't say what the
       | title claims. We know now what the Rieman Hypothesis is, but how
       | did the author learned to love, and more importantly to "fear"
       | the RH? What's there to fear? The name of the famous movie (with
       | the bomb) doesn't even have "fear" in it, so the author had
       | something in mind with "fear", but after watching the video, I
       | have no clue what.
       | 
       | Second is the promise in the beginning of the video to give us a
       | hint why the RH is important. What we learn is that somehow each
       | zeta zero adds another harmonic to some type of series
       | approximation of the (cousin of the) prime counting function.
       | Which is great; if we add enough harmonics we get to approximate
       | this function as precisely as we want. But why is it important
       | that these zeros are on the vertical line Im z = 0.5 ? I have
       | absolutely no clue.
       | 
       | Don't get me wrong, I find that watching this video was a very
       | good investment of 16 minutes of my life. But there is no need to
       | overpromise, especially since the video delivers a lot as is.
        
         | rfurmani wrote:
         | > But why is it important that these zeros are on the vertical
         | line Im z = 0.5
         | 
         | Great question. The formula works whether or not the zeros have
         | real part 0.5, but its implications are different. If you're
         | counting primes up to x you will get the main term (roughly
         | x/log x) and each zero p will give an oscillating error term ~
         | x^p/p. If the real part is always 0.5 then these error terms
         | are all on sqrt(x) scale, which is what you would expect from
         | random variation. If on the other hand you have a single zero
         | right of the line, say at real part 3/4 (and mirror image one
         | at real part 1/4) then now you get a secondary error term of
         | size x^(3/4) that dominates all of the other error terms,
         | giving some extra structure to the primes: they're no longer
         | random, you can predict where they are more or less likely.
        
           | drbacon wrote:
           | One million thanks for this comment. This is the most concise
           | and clear explanation of why the critical line is important
           | that I have ever read.
        
         | nabla9 wrote:
         | > title claims.
         | 
         | Discussions based on the title are useless. Good articles
         | frequently have titles that are bad or not even relevant. Title
         | of an article:
         | 
         | 1. May not be chosen by the author. Its often editor decision.
         | 
         | 2. Article can have multiple changing titles. For clickbait
         | reasons.
         | 
         | Discussions based on title are generally worthless. In the HN
         | you can ask someone to change the title to be more relevant.
        
         | Covzire wrote:
         | If one could predict with pinpoint accuracy all the prime
         | numbers approaching infinity with certainty and with trivial
         | resources (without having to test each one for prime-ness),
         | would it have any impact on modern day cryptography?
        
           | bawolff wrote:
           | Not an expert, but the key thing is usually factoring, e.g.
           | finding which prime numbers multiplied together make a
           | certain composite number. The hard part is finding which are
           | the right prime numbers (there are lots of prime numbers).
           | Finding numbers that are prime,just generally,is a very quick
           | operation already.
        
           | gameswithgo wrote:
           | Being able to find primes faster would make modern public key
           | crypto better I guess, since you could find large keys faster
           | and thus use larger keys.
           | 
           | Unless the theory also leads to faster factorization methods
        
           | simias wrote:
           | On RSA-style prime-based crypto potentially but barring a
           | much stronger result than merely being able to cheaply find
           | primes things like ECC would probably still be safe.
        
         | red_trumpet wrote:
         | The part why he fears it is covered in the text below the
         | video.
        
         | gimboland wrote:
         | > but how did the author learned to love, and more importantly
         | to "fear" the RH? What's there to fear?
         | 
         | It's made abundantly clear: they learned to love it through the
         | course they were fortunate enough to take as an undergraduate,
         | and they learned to fear it later, as a researcher, when they
         | realised that what there was to fear was wasting their career
         | attacking something that was probably just too big and too hard
         | to be sensible for them to attack.
        
           | Tade0 wrote:
           | I understand that the real proof of the RH is the friendships
           | we make along the way, but what would happen if we just acted
           | with the assumption that it is true?
        
             | rfurmani wrote:
             | There's been a lot of research that has assumed it to be
             | true and built on top of it to find deeper implications.
             | 
             | Still, a number of people who've worked most closely with
             | the Riemann zeta function, even the ones who led the
             | computations and numerical verifications, have expressed
             | doubts on whether the Riemann Hypothesis is actually true:
             | https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0311162
        
             | waynecochran wrote:
             | This is the difference between a scientist and a
             | mathematician. A scientist would consider the empirical
             | evidence more than sufficient to consider RH to be true.
             | 
             | Of course there is hope that a proof of RH would reveal
             | some deeper understanding -- not merely a conformation.
        
               | hansvm wrote:
               | I'm not so sure a scientist would consider RH true at
               | this point. Math has a rich history of conjectures
               | appearing true for the first n dimensions, the first k
               | inputs, the first z partial/tangential proofs, etc. The
               | evidence for RH isn't any stronger than that for a
               | plethora of eventually-proven-false conjectures.
               | 
               | Do you know if anyone has tabulated stats on conjecture
               | proofs? That could be a fun dataset to examine.
        
               | jjgreen wrote:
               | As Richard K. Guy's strong law of small numbers states:
               | There aren't enough small numbers to meet the many
               | demands made of them.
        
         | mensetmanusman wrote:
         | The fear was alluded to.
         | 
         | If so much technology is built around a hypothesis, it is
         | essentially building a large house of cards if the hypothesis
         | turns out to be incorrect.
         | 
         | Imagine if the world set up a monetary system and what would
         | happen after 100 years if suddenly everyone could print money
         | when a fatal flaw in a system was discovered.
        
         | wodenokoto wrote:
         | The title relates to the article and the video is a supporting
         | piece of media.
         | 
         | The article talks about the personal story of how the author
         | first met the Riemann Hypothesis.
        
       | legel wrote:
       | Fantastic video! For me seeing this math for the first time was a
       | very beautiful surprise.
        
       | st1x7 wrote:
       | Vaguely related question - what is the best textbook that you can
       | recommend for studying complex analysis?
        
         | rfurmani wrote:
         | I've heard very good things about Visual Complex Analysis, as
         | well.
        
         | lldbg wrote:
         | "Complex Analysis: An Introduction to the Theory of Analytic
         | Functions of One Complex Variable" By Lars Ahlfors was very
         | enjoyable to me. However, I read it after I already knew
         | Complex Analysis.
        
         | ellis-bell wrote:
         | i second tristan needham's visual complex analysis.
         | 
         | some other good ones:
         | 
         | * the one we used in my undergrad course was fisher's complex
         | variables which is great if you're learning for the purposes of
         | applications. it's a cheap dover book.
         | 
         | * rudin's real and complex analysis (if theory is your thing.
         | note that rudin's books, while great, do require a good
         | background in math).
         | 
         | * as the article mentions, eli stein has a series of books on
         | the four main branches of analysis. i believe the second book
         | is on complex analysis.
        
       | Moeg wrote:
       | Am I supposed to Google what the hypothesis is? Is it really too
       | much to ask of writers to provide context first?
        
       | Santosh83 wrote:
       | Distantly related question. It was claimed that Alpha Zero taught
       | itself to play incredibly high level chess from the very basic
       | point of playing with itself millions of times after having been
       | fed the basic building block rules of chess and nothing else.
       | 
       | Now I'm wondering if something like this can be made to work for
       | discovering new mathematical relationships or solving existing
       | hypothesis by training a neural network with what we know of
       | maths so far and then letting it "play" with the equations?
       | 
       | Am I being too naive here?
        
         | TheCraiggers wrote:
         | >Am I being too naive here?
         | 
         | I don't think so, but I think the trick will be how to score a
         | new mathematical relationship as "interesting". Basically, a
         | fitness metric. With Chess, you have the obvious win/loss
         | metric, and also number of turns and possibly time. With math,
         | how do you quantify the level of interestingness between 2+2=4
         | and p=np?
         | 
         | This isn't a snarky question, by the way. I'm genuinely
         | interested in how this might be done.
        
           | whatshisface wrote:
           | It would be sufficiently amazing for AlphaProof to simply
           | answer the questions posed to it. The training data would be
           | pairs of theorems and proofs as already existing in the CoQ
           | and other proof checker literature.
        
             | groby_b wrote:
             | Unless you have a prover that can answer "is this actually
             | a _correct_ proof ", your fitness function is essentially
             | "does this look like a proof"
             | 
             | And if you have a prover that can answer that question, you
             | don't need to train a neural network to give you the
             | answer.
             | 
             | Proving maths demands 100% precision and recall, at which
             | point employing ML doesn't make sense - the point of ML is
             | (horribly simplified) stochastic reasoning, not finding
             | truths.
        
               | PartiallyTyped wrote:
               | But ML could in theory accelerate the process. For
               | example, AlphaZero uses ML to highlight the correct paths
               | in search algorithms. The same search algorithms exist
               | for stockfish and both can reach the same conclusions,
               | but, AlphaZero ends up looking up much shorter distance
               | than stockfish, yet it wins. If anything, it is
               | significantly more human-like than stockfish.
        
               | gjulianm wrote:
               | The search space for proofs is far bigger and less
               | structured than a Go game. A lot of proofs also require
               | creativity, in the sense that they aren't just "find the
               | set of logical steps from 'initial condition' to
               | 'proof'", but they require auxiliary theorems,
               | definitions and constructions that help make the problem
               | manageable.
               | 
               | Another problem is that a lot of proofs starts by
               | exploration. For example, certain bounds for functions or
               | convergence rates are proved without knowing what will be
               | the end result.
               | 
               | Of all the problems that ML could be applied to, I find
               | mathematical proofs one of the least promising. One, I
               | don't see enough similarity between proofs that would
               | allow any algorithm to learn useful patterns; and two, I
               | don't think most mathematicians would trust a proof that
               | cannot be understood (even if the output is a set of
               | steps for a formal system, I imagine translating that to
               | human language could be quite difficult).
        
               | touisteur wrote:
               | I wish we'd start with general loop variant/invariant
               | generation...
        
               | whatshisface wrote:
               | Proof checkers are an existing technology. That's what
               | CoQ is.
        
           | lacker wrote:
           | Indeed, existing automated theorem provers do spend a lot of
           | time discarding true statements as "insufficiently
           | interesting". In general, the longer a statement the less
           | interesting it is. The easier it is to prove with simpler
           | statements, the less interesting it is. And if it's
           | superceded by a more general rule it is less interesting.
           | 
           | For example, an automated theorem prover can easily prove
           | many statements of the form "A or not-A or (any long
           | statement)". Those are all uninteresting tautologies that
           | should be discarded.
           | 
           | It's interesting to theorize about improving these heuristics
           | with AI methods, there is some work along these lines like
           | ENIGMA-NG.
        
         | mensetmanusman wrote:
         | From a finite set of axioms you can generate an infinite number
         | of proofs because complexity is unbounded.
         | 
         | 'Proofs' in human parlance are those which we believe to be
         | interesting or aesthetic or useful.
        
         | rfurmani wrote:
         | Adding an extra point, one thing that makes this difficult is
         | that a lot of this kind of research is not about applying
         | existing ideas but coming up with something that has never been
         | done before, and neutral networks are a lot worse with
         | creativity than with pattern matching. It's also hard to get
         | enough training examples, especially since you'd either want
         | these to be in strict logical language or train a system to
         | recognize whether a hundred page proof in natural language is
         | rigorous or not. So it's like a very long maze where noody
         | knows if you're getting closer to the exit or not, and in most
         | rooms you have to come up with something original or discover a
         | new dimension. And there's the aspect whereby a lot of
         | significant research is: create a new abstraction, realize and
         | convince others that this abstraction is useful and gives you
         | new intuition that lets you solve new problems.
        
         | ellis-bell wrote:
         | you might be able to do something like "predict the next prime
         | number" or "predict the next zero of the Riemann zeta
         | function".
         | 
         | you could try something like this for statements in a formal
         | axiomatic system, but know that you're running up against
         | things like the halting problem / entscheidungsproblem / godel
         | incompleteness. so it may be possible to train a neural net to
         | decide the veracity of a statement and do so more quickly than
         | a human might, but you would inevitably be running up against
         | things that are truly undecidable in nature. which is not like
         | go or chess where although they are difficult, they are
         | decidable.
        
           | sanxiyn wrote:
           | I am not sure how math is unlike chess. Chess has three
           | outcomes: win, loss, draw. That seems exactly like math,
           | having true, false, undecidable.
        
             | gjulianm wrote:
             | Yes, but it isn't useful. A conversation also has three
             | outcomes (neutral, you like the person more, or less) and
             | yet it doesn't make conversations similar to chess.
        
               | whatshisface wrote:
               | Chess and math are both searches over countably infinite
               | trees.
        
               | gjulianm wrote:
               | And a conversation is a search over a countably infinite
               | tree too.
               | 
               | My point is that even though some things have technical
               | similarities, in practice they are very different
               | challenges.
        
               | whatshisface wrote:
               | Math and chess are both very easy to check. Proof
               | checkers and chess rule checkers both exist.
               | "Conversation checkers" do not.
        
         | whatshisface wrote:
         | There is a sense in which that is a great idea, and a sense in
         | which it is a not so great idea. If AlphaProof could prove
         | theorems as superhumanly as AlphaGo wins at Go, that would
         | really be something, they might be able to claim all of the
         | millennium prizes. However, the longterm usefulness to
         | mathematics may be somewhat limited. Mathematicians are
         | interested in proofs not so much because of the statements, but
         | because of what those proofs add to our knowledge of the way
         | math fits together. It isn't just about "true" or "false," it's
         | about why. If AlphaProof generated a long and unreadable proof
         | with no discernible structure, it would not be such a large
         | contribution to mathematics as if a human figured out "why" and
         | wrote it in a way other humans could understand.
         | 
         | Of course, it is possible that clever users could tease useful
         | information out of the black box truth oracle. Perhaps by
         | modifying the statement of the conjecture and checking each
         | modification, they could discover some parts of the structure
         | of the problem, which would help inspire a useful proof.
         | Furthermore, it would be helpful to never again waste time
         | trying to prove a false conjecture.
        
           | idolaspecus wrote:
           | Your comment inspired an interesting (to me at least)
           | thought. I'm imagining a world where mathematics becomes too
           | advanced for even the brightest human being, but progress is
           | preserved by proof-generating programs running in data
           | centers. The data centers churn out exabytes of mathematical
           | proofs, and humanity employs an army of what are effectively
           | philologists/semioticians to dissect, mine, and excavate
           | these proofs for meaning.
        
             | brzozowski wrote:
             | And when your surpassing creations find the answers you
             | asked for, you can't understand their analysis and you
             | can't verify their answers. You have to take their word on
             | faith--Or you use information theory to flatten it for you,
             | to squash the tesseract into two dimensions and the Klein
             | bottle into three, to simplify reality and pray to whatever
             | Gods survived the millennium that your honorable twisting
             | of the truth hasn't ruptured any of its load-bearing
             | pylons. You hire people like me; the crossbred progeny of
             | profilers and proof assistants and information theorists...
             | 
             | In formal settings you'd call me Synthesist.
             | 
             | --Peter Watts, Blindsight (2006)
             | 
             | [1]: https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm
        
             | dwohnitmok wrote:
             | Ted Chiang has a (very) short story exploring this idea,
             | with metahumans replacing data centers here:
             | https://www.nature.com/articles/35014679
        
               | agar wrote:
               | Thank you for that link. A very interesting story, with
               | surprising philosophical depth given its brevity.
        
           | karmakaze wrote:
           | We already have machine-assisted proofs which are structured
           | by people but executed by machines. AlphaProof would be that
           | but structured by machine. As with the machine-assisted
           | proofs, there's value in knowing and building upon the result
           | even if the methods themselves can't be adapted for other
           | use.
        
           | lacker wrote:
           | _If AlphaProof generated a long and unreadable proof with no
           | discernible structure, it would not be such a large
           | contribution to mathematics as if a human figured out "why"
           | and wrote it in a way other humans could understand._
           | 
           | Maybe not directly. But if AlphaProof managed to prove the
           | Riemann hypothesis, I bet it wouldn't be long before human
           | mathematicians had managed to decipher the proof and explain
           | it in a way that other mathematicians found useful. It's just
           | a lot easier to re-explain something that other people have
           | already proved, rather than proving it yourself.
        
             | Jabbles wrote:
             | Godel's incompleteness theorem doesn't fill me with the
             | same confidence as you that "a true theorem should have a
             | useful explanation".
             | 
             | In fact, looking at chess engines tells us that sometimes
             | (though not always) brute-force calculation of many
             | possibilities gives us better moves. In the same way some
             | true statements might just be an exhaustive calculation.
             | 
             | Perhaps the four color theorem is the most famous example
             | of a proof that has lacked (still lacks) a lot of useful
             | lemmas in relation to its length:
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_color_theorem
        
           | virgil_disgr4ce wrote:
           | True, and important. However, I suppose it could be argued
           | that if the only results AlphaProof could obtain were long
           | and unreadable proof(s) with no discernible structure, it
           | might suggest something about the epistemic assumptions we
           | tend to make about Occam's Razor and the (so-called) beauty
           | and parsimony.
           | 
           | On that angle, it could be further argued that humans are
           | biased towards 'readable' proofs and that there are many
           | undiscovered 'unreadable' proofs that we simply have no way
           | of obtaining without automation of some kind.
           | 
           | Anyway I assume there are volumes already written on this
           | subject...
        
             | whatshisface wrote:
             | > _the epistemic assumptions we tend to make about Occam 's
             | Razor and the (so-called) beauty and parsimony._
             | 
             | The vast majority of ways to write a program are unreadable
             | messes. The shortest way to write a program is sometimes an
             | unreadable mess, mainly when it's been code golfed. The
             | longest ways to write a program are _always_ unreadable.
             | Proofs work the same way - and if Alpha Go selects randomly
             | from all of the ways to write a reasonable-length proof, it
             | is virtually guaranteed to pick an unreadable one.
        
             | postalrat wrote:
             | A long unreadable proof would not mean a small proof
             | doesn't exist.
             | 
             | I feel like a unreadable proof would be useful to simply
             | know something is true while a small proof would be more
             | useful to perhaps gain some sort of insight.
        
             | touisteur wrote:
             | Maybe that'll be time to bring in AlphaProofReductor or
             | AlphaProofCanonizer. I'm finding this worry a bit strange.
             | I'm guessing tools evolve together depending on need, so as
             | long as humans want to know 'why and how' there'll be some
             | effort in reduction?
        
         | Bjartr wrote:
         | The trick is coming up with a reward function that drives
         | exploration when "played" against itself. Chess has an easy
         | one, win the game. General mathematics doesn't have anything so
         | easily specified.
        
           | whatshisface wrote:
           | It does, math has "prove the conjecture."
        
             | rfurmani wrote:
             | We can't even solve Sonic the Hedgehog without getting
             | stuck in dead-ends in the game :-)
             | https://openai.com/blog/retro-contest/
        
             | 317070 wrote:
             | Well, math is two parts.
             | 
             | There is the "prove this conjecture I have" part, which I
             | think will be taken over by machines rather soon (say,
             | within my lifetime). I cannot imagine there is something
             | extra-ordinarily hard that mathematicians do, that is
             | somehow not captured by how a Go player approaches the
             | game.
             | 
             | There is also the "come up with an interesting conjecture"
             | part, which I think is a lot harder. It is extra-ordinarily
             | hard to specify what exactly makes some conjectures more
             | interesting than others. So I reckon this part of math will
             | be much harder to automate in the long run. It will
             | probably require a lot of cross-contamination from AI that
             | manage to write interesting books for example.
        
               | gjulianm wrote:
               | > I cannot imagine there is something extra-ordinarily
               | hard that mathematicians do, that is somehow not captured
               | by how a Go player approaches the game.
               | 
               | It's not "extraordinarily hard" but the issue is that
               | math does not have a well-defined search space. A lot of
               | times, proving statements requires quite a lot of
               | intermediate results, additional tools and definitions...
               | There is more creativity in math proofs that people
               | think, and I don't think ML algorithms will be able to
               | reproduce that. At most I see specific algorithms for
               | limited purposes.
        
       | mpettitt wrote:
       | Matt Haig's "The Humans" talks about humanity finding the answer
       | to the Riemann Hypothesis being feared universally - it's
       | simultaneously very important to the plot, and a convenient
       | MacGuffin.
        
       | wodenokoto wrote:
       | The accompanying video popped up on my YouTube recommendation
       | list last night and it is really good. Like, you married a
       | numberphile video with 3blue1brown, good.
        
         | st1x7 wrote:
         | I don't think it comes close to 3blue1brown's video on the same
         | topic - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD0NjbwqlYw
         | 
         | Still nice of the video in the original post to give a bit more
         | of a historical context, instead of focusing entirely on the
         | mathematics. It could have done without the building analogy
         | around the beginning though, that didn't come up later and was
         | just distracting.
        
           | pseudolus wrote:
           | +1 for the 3blue1brown recommendation. Between the two, a
           | non-mathematician can acquire a layperson's comprehension of
           | the Riemann Hypothesis. Additionally, John Derbyshire (of the
           | unfortunate views regarding race) wrote a very good book
           | "Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved
           | Problem in Mathematics" that covered both historical and
           | mathematical aspects of the Riemann Hypothesis [0].
           | 
           | [0] https://www.amazon.com/Prime-Obsession-Bernhard-Greatest-
           | Mat...
        
             | EricMausler wrote:
             | That video made complex analysis click for me
        
       | jbj wrote:
       | The vertical scaling of the counting function with log(p) went a
       | little quick, does someone know an easy to digest resource to
       | this? also what would be the logic for now including the p^n of
       | primes, p ??
        
         | war1025 wrote:
         | I felt that way about most of the video. I never took advanced
         | math theory classes, but I have enough background that those
         | classes would probably have been the next step for me if I had
         | continued on.
         | 
         | Seemed like every time I felt like he was about to explain
         | something in a way that would click for me, then all the sudden
         | he left out the last two sentences and moved on.
         | 
         | Still a neat video though.
        
           | jbj wrote:
           | Some of my lecturers throughout Uni, always glanced across
           | the entire auditorium to see if anyone needed clarity of what
           | was said before switching slide/erasing the blackboard.
           | 
           | Having those extra seconds after something has been said,
           | while being able to watch graphics/text/figures helped the
           | information sink in for me.
           | 
           | This moment to digest what was said is not really available
           | in this video, but I guess youtube is different from a
           | lecture in the sense that the whole thing can be set on
           | pause.
           | 
           | I think I have the impression that the visual explanation
           | here appeared and sometimes even disappeared before him
           | mentioning the "take-home-message".
           | 
           | I am still very impressed with the explainer and the visual
           | assistance though.
        
       | spicymaki wrote:
       | This is a great video. I think finally I understand the basics of
       | Riemann hypothesis and the zeta function z(s). Thanks for posting
       | this.
        
       | odyssey7 wrote:
       | If someone wanted to learn more about this type of mathematics,
       | without matriculating at a university, what would be some good
       | starting points?
        
         | rfurmani wrote:
         | This Numberphile video on the Riemann Hypothesis is also very
         | good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6c6uIyieoo
        
         | SkyBelow wrote:
         | 3Blue1Brown on YouTube has a number of great videos into math
         | that help give a visual understanding without needing to sit
         | down and do the pure number crunching. I'm not sure he has one
         | on the Riemann Hypothesis in particular, but he does cover a
         | number of items that would be somewhat related and help build a
         | level of comfort with being exposed to the math, even if you
         | can't do the pure number crunching.
         | 
         | Mathologer would be my second recommendation. Once again not
         | sure he has touched the Riemann Hypothesis, but he does a
         | number of great videos where you can start expanding being
         | comfortable with often untouched fields of math (like modular
         | arithematic) while introducing a how seemingly unrelated fields
         | end up having connections.
         | 
         | Videos can go between 20 minutes to an hour and I often enjoy
         | watching one every few days.
        
         | ryanianian wrote:
         | Depends on your level of {experience, intended engagement,
         | patience for pedantics, intended outcomes}.
         | 
         | I've found that 3Blue1Brown (youtube) gives a great starting
         | point for many topics. Provided you actively participate in
         | them, the videos will build up some intuition so you know what
         | questions to ask (and why they're worth asking).
         | 
         | The author usually links to followup resources so you know
         | where to go next. I've found his resources a bit hit-or-miss,
         | but they give me enough to know if I want to continue
         | exploring. If I do, I usually check out a good textbook (I
         | refer to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17617825 often).
        
       | frankfrankfrank wrote:
       | From Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann's tomb:
       | 
       | "Denen die Got dienen mussen
       | 
       | Alle dinge zum besten dienen."
       | 
       | Translated:
       | 
       | "All those that serve God
       | 
       | All things best serve them."
        
         | jhncls wrote:
         | Wikipedia seems to disagree (and includes a photo): "Denen die
         | Got lieben mussen, alle dinge zum besten dienen."
         | 
         | Which it suggests translating as "For those who love God, all
         | things must work together for the best".
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernhard_Riemann
        
           | simonh wrote:
           | It's also one of the verses that inspired Voltaire's
           | character Dr. Pangloss to declare that "All is for the best
           | in this, the best of all possible worlds."
        
           | wussboy wrote:
           | Which is a direct quote from a Bible verse, and would make
           | more sense (but be less mysterious)
        
             | earthboundkid wrote:
             | Specifically, Romans 8:28.
        
       | rfurmani wrote:
       | I love this quote:
       | 
       | > A meeting on how to extend the GPY method was immediately
       | organized at the American Institute of Mathematics in San Jose,
       | California. As a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed grad student, I
       | felt extraordinarily lucky to be there among the world's top
       | experts. By the end of the week, the experts agreed that it was
       | basically impossible to improve the GPY method to get bounded
       | prime gaps. Fortunately, Yitang Zhang did not attend this
       | meeting. Almost a decade later, after years of incredibly hard
       | work in relative isolation, he found a way around the impasse and
       | proved the experts wrong. I guess the moral of my story is that
       | when people organize meetings on how not to solve the Riemann
       | hypothesis (as they do from time to time), don't go!
        
         | rfurmani wrote:
         | That said, I do wish I were at AIM's meeting on the Riemann
         | Hypothesis :-) https://aimath.org/rh2018/
         | 
         | The lecture videos are online and are a good way to get both
         | historical context and connection to how people are thinking
         | about it currently.
         | 
         | This seminar talk on how to fail to prove RH was also great
         | https://www.math.rutgers.edu/news-events/list-all-events/ica...
        
           | Jabbles wrote:
           | Is that a link to a VoD or a historical event with no
           | recording?
        
       | mdoms wrote:
       | Off topic, but does anyone know where one gets started on making
       | motion graphics like in that video? This combination of cool
       | maths and animated visuals is so interesting to me, but I
       | wouldn't even know where to begin. What kind of software is used
       | to generate this kind of visualisation? Are there free or
       | affordable online courses? Is there a job market for someone with
       | this ability and also with software development chops?
        
         | xevrem wrote:
         | I believe the maker of 3blue1brown has a open source kit for
         | just that: https://github.com/3b1b/manim
        
           | mdoms wrote:
           | Thanks for the link.
        
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