[HN Gopher] The Mandelbrot Monk (1999)
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The Mandelbrot Monk (1999)
Author : rfreytag
Score : 133 points
Date : 2021-06-05 14:40 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (users.math.yale.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (users.math.yale.edu)
| rsj_hn wrote:
| This is great stuff. Udo of Aachen being the first discoverer of
| the Mandelbrot set brings to mind other famous clergymen:
|
| Alfred Young, discoverer of Young's Tableux and Young diagrams,
| which are widely used in mathematical physics and representation
| theory, was a parish priest in Birdbrook, Essex
|
| https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Young_Alfr...
|
| Johann Werner (1468-1822), an ordained priest in Nuremberg,
| discovered a way to determine your position from sightings of the
| moon, discovered trigonometric identities and worked on conic
| sections, and was a pioneer of modern meteorology.
|
| https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Werner/
|
| Marin Mersenne (1588-1648), of Mersenne Prime fame, was a French
| monk, a member of the The Order of the Minims "having been set up
| by St Francis of Paula in 1436, was thriving at this time. They
| believed they were the least (minimi) of all the religions on
| earth, and devoted themselves to prayer, study, and scholarship.
| They wore a habit made of coarse black wool with broad sleeves
| and girded by a thin black cord (as seen in the portraits of
| Mersenne). "
|
| https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Mersenne/
|
| Magnus Joseph Weininger (1919-2017) was a mathematician, ordained
| priest, and Benedictine monk who discovered constriuctions for
| the remaining set of uniform polyhedra, and authored over 25
| books on mathematical topics related to convex geometry.
|
| Edwin Abbot (1938-1926) was an ordained priest, schoolmaster, and
| author who wrote many books including the pop-math books such as
| "Flatland" as well as "Shakespearean Grammar", "How to write
| clearly", and exegetical texts on the works of Paul and John in
| the New Testament, and Koine Greek grammars.
|
| John Polkinghome (1930-2021) as an anglican priest, mathematical
| physicist, and theologian who worked on high energy physics. A
| student of Murray Gell-Mann at Caltech, he authored many research
| papers on Scattering matrices, renormalization, pertubation
| theory, spinors, and other topics in quantum mechanics, with
| fellowships at SLAC, Cern, Berkeley and Princeton. He was elected
| to the Royal Society and received a knighthood.
|
| https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Polkinghor...
|
| Francesco Maria Grimaldi (1618-1663) was a Jesuit priest who
| worked in mathematics, astronomy, mechanics, and optics. His most
| famous discovery was the diffraction of light, by creating a
| prototype of Young's double slit experiment.
|
| https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Grimaldi/
| Tagbert wrote:
| Are all of these hoaxes as Udo of Aachen was? Or are you mixing
| real discoveries with the hoax? I've always despised April
| Fools jokes of this sort because they tend to outlive the joke.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Many are real.
| pvg wrote:
| Short previous thread:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14614196
| [deleted]
| oolonthegreat wrote:
| my disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined. can
| anyone point me to an actual monk who was 700 years ahead of
| their time please?
| lioeters wrote:
| Not seven centuries ahead, but who comes to my mind is:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athanasius_Kircher (1602-1680)
|
| > One of the first people to observe microbes through a
| microscope, Kircher was ahead of his time in proposing that the
| plague was caused by an infectious microorganism and in
| suggesting effective measures to prevent the spread of the
| disease.
| johnaspden wrote:
| > wearing facemasks to prevent the inhalation of germs
|
| so about three hundred years ahead of the WHO, then...
| michaelsbradley wrote:
| Albertus Magnus, perhaps.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albertus_Magnus
| computerphage wrote:
| Thomas Bayes?
|
| ...but you might have wait another 400 years to be sure
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Though unnamed and I won't provide links, the monks that
| doodled pictures of things like nuns picking penises off a tree
| in the margins of books might qualify. It's called marginalia
| if you're interested.
| kybernetikos wrote:
| Roger Bacon, although probably 300 rather than 700.
|
| Bede is another contender.
| katzgrau wrote:
| Ack, had me fooled. I wanted it to be true!
|
| But I don't agree with the comments suggesting that we need to be
| more skeptical - and that not as many people should have been
| fooled if they were.
|
| If an article/expert goes to great lengths to fool you, bringing
| in-depth falsehoods and an impressive platform, at some point you
| aren't the one to blame.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I was completely taken in; and astonished. It's a tale well-told.
| benjohnson wrote:
| This is a good fun - but there is a 13th century painting that
| does make you wonder a bit:
|
| https://home.ubalt.edu/NTYGFIT/ai_03_illuminating_love/ai_03...
| inigojonesguy wrote:
| I thought this is a hoax as well but
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_moralis%C3%A9e
|
| Good one, thanks!
| zeeshanqureshi wrote:
| April 1st 1999 in the footer had me thinking.
| sangeeth96 wrote:
| I was about to share this with my peers and end the day with a
| happy discovery but you had to ruin it, didn't ya?
| Biganon wrote:
| With the Basilisk collection
| (https://suricrasia.online/unfiction/basilisk/), this is the
| second time this month that I get fooled by a hoax! My
| disappointment is big every time
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Heart of Jesus with the cross. Seems to my eyes to be similar in
| shape.
|
| https://www.wallpaperflare.com/collage-cover-art-cross-heart...
| dvt wrote:
| It _is_ the same shape! Namely, the Cardioid[1]. It 's simply a
| happy coincidence that the human heart and Mandelbrot set have
| the same basic geometric shape, and probably not a Dan Brown-
| ian conspiracy :)
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardioid
| anikan_vader wrote:
| >> (I say 'lucky' because Buffon's Method converges extremely
| badly, and it's well possible that Udo achieved this good result
| by choosing his stopping point judiciously - perhaps influenced
| by the 3.1418 quoted by his contemporary, Leonard of Pisa,
| otherwise known as Fibonacci).
|
| Udo was truly well ahead of his time [1]. Martingale theory
| wasn't discovered until the 20th century, but Udo finds a way to
| subtly apply martingales in a way that many of us would struggle
| to understand even today.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optional_stopping_theorem
| I_Byte wrote:
| The article is an April fools joke. I let my guard down and it
| got me as well until I looked at some of the other comments.
| anikan_vader wrote:
| My comment is a joke as well. If you frame Buffon's needle
| game as a Martingale, playing until you get an answer that
| agrees with Fibonacci's previous work does not meet the
| preconditions for the optional stopping theorem. Intuitively,
| it's equivalent to starting with $1 and making fair bets with
| infinite credit until you have $2. Sure, it's possible, but
| it's not a "fair" betting game.
|
| I just thought the quote from the article was unbelievably
| good -- "choosing his stopping point judiciously" is such a
| well-done understatement.
| akuro wrote:
| This kind of thing, whilst fun, is kinda dangerous. I'm not so
| sure what to make of it. I sniffed it out quickly because I have
| extensive experience with maths. Many people don't, because
| unlike me most people have social lives.
|
| My dad still believes that the Sun makes the "Om" sound after
| seeing a post by some kind of Hindu nationalist on Twitter. I
| have told him many times, in the kindest way I can, that it's a
| load of rubbish. He still doesn't really believe me, mostly
| because the idea of the Sun making that sound is a pleasant idea
| that agrees with his world view.
|
| Send this article to a hundred people and a lowball of seventy
| will take it as fact. Of that seventy, there will be a fraction
| who will believe it - or rather, internalise the notion of it -
| even despite being told that it is false.
|
| In all fairness it's also very likely that I'm a just a nasty
| killjoy.
| dvt wrote:
| > Send this article to a hundred people and a lowball of
| seventy will take it as fact. Of that seventy, there will be a
| fraction who will believe it - or rather, internalise the
| notion of it - even despite being told that it is false.
|
| So what's your solution? Living in a world with no jokes, no
| satire, no hyperbole, no poetry, no simile? A world where
| Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" would've never been
| published because some people might take it a bit _too_
| seriously? I posit that _this_ is the real danger.
| whatshisface wrote:
| I think some people might actually be taking _A Modest
| Proposal_ a bit too seriously. ;)
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Send this article to a hundred people and a lowball of seventy
| will take it as fact. Of that seventy, there will be a fraction
| who will believe it - or rather, internalise the notion of it -
| even despite being told that it is false."
|
| And there will be at least some people, who got a valuable
| lesson, that not everything which looks like a proper citation,
| is real.
|
| But btw. most people will not read the whole thing alltogether
| and of those who do, because they know the Mandelbrot set -
| they will likely figure it out, too.
| johnaspden wrote:
| This is priceless, thank you!
| eeegnu wrote:
| This is really a great lesson at always taking things in
| skeptically. I saw yale.edu and the great detail in multiple
| sections and the block of citations at the bottom that I let my
| guard down.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| michaericalribo wrote:
| This is a fun little piece, but worth noting:
|
| It is absolutely a work of fiction ("hoax", as Wikipedia puts it
| [1]). I was fooled the first time I read it...but the date at the
| bottom gives it away.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udo_of_Aachen
| skullgrid wrote:
| TBH this post should probably be taken down, or at least
| explicitly stated as an April Fools joke in the title. I almost
| didn't come to the comments section, and I didn't read all the
| way to the bottom date. I definitely would have taken this as
| fact.
| bla3 wrote:
| Sounds like you learned a valuable lesson about believing
| things you read on the internet today :)
|
| Taking it down means others won't be able to learn this
| lesson.
| Quekid5 wrote:
| I agree that it's important to learn these lessons, but if
| recent history has taught us anything it's that reach and
| amplification will drown out most voices of reason.
|
| I think Vimes might have had an aphorism about this...
|
| EDIT: aphorism, not proverb
| dvt wrote:
| This a very well known April Fools joke (especially in
| academia). Maybe the date should be added, but taking it down
| is a bit much.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| My skeptic-radar was pinging at a rate that it sounded like a
| continuous tone.
| lanstin wrote:
| While I enthusiastically retweeted it with a little nostrum
| on how funny people's interests are. Then read the
| comments, and then deleted the tweet.
| hoseja wrote:
| I was extremely skeptical from the start, simply because it's
| fairly impossible to stumble on the Mandelbrot set by just
| messing about, it's a result of iterating a fairly arbitrary
| function on complex numbers and can't reasonably be generated
| by hand.
| orangecat wrote:
| You don't need the full theory of complex numbers. Start with
| a zero vector, then iterate doubling the angle, squaring the
| magnitude, and translating by the vector you're evaluating.
| It's not totally inconceivable that somebody could have come
| up with it by just messing around geometrically.
|
| But yes, good instincts.
| hoseja wrote:
| Wow, thanks! Never heard the geometric explanation and it,
| as usual, is way more intuitive.
| joshspankit wrote:
| The photo definitely looks photoshopped, but it's just
| believable enough to warrant reading the comments
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| It definitely needs the title to be flagged. It's a time waster
| unless you know it's a hoax and still want to read it.
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