[HN Gopher] Ramanujan's Lost Notebook
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       Ramanujan's Lost Notebook
        
       Author : benbreen
       Score  : 91 points
       Date   : 2024-04-15 19:54 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
        
       | Der_Einzige wrote:
       | I'm an atheist, but when Ramanujan claims to derive all of their
       | formulas from god, I ask how we can make it easier for them to
       | listen to god, rather than feel the urge to argue against them.
        
         | FieryTransition wrote:
         | If you meet him, and he thought discussing god was interesting,
         | would you then do it? If he wanted to discuss your faith in
         | god, would you do it then?
        
           | cassepipe wrote:
           | Discussing is always interesting but I would probably
           | interpret it as him not being able to explain his own
           | abilities like some people just "see" good chess moves or
           | just "know" that there are actually 48 matches on that floor
        
             | mistermann wrote:
             | I would wonder what the truth of the matter is, but each to
             | their own, the unknown is _not popular /pleasant_.
        
         | methinksstuff wrote:
         | If you look the origin of the word genius I think there is a
         | good parallel as thinking that your own genius is an external
         | spiritual entity whispering you solutions
        
         | vjerancrnjak wrote:
         | I feel like his statements on god are very similar to this one:
         | 
         | > Simon P. Norton, an expert on the properties of the monster
         | group, is quoted as saying, "I can explain what Monstrous
         | Moonshine is in one sentence, it is the voice of God."
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_group#Moonshine
        
           | fuzztester wrote:
           | Solid.
           | 
           | Pun intended.
        
         | fuzztester wrote:
         | Goddess also, actually.
         | 
         | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan
         | 
         | Check section "Personality and spiritual life".
        
       | paulpauper wrote:
       | Not expecting too many comments here. These formulas are
       | complicated and it took a single person in the later 20th century
       | to re-derive a good chunk of them.
        
       | hi41 wrote:
       | In the spirit of openness which is the hallmark of FOSS such as
       | GNU/Linux, would this book be scanned and published for all to
       | see? That would be great. Like FOSS, math too belongs to the
       | world. I heard someone say that the university has not published
       | many of his works. That would be sad. If published someone like
       | Terrence Tao could write formal proofs for them like he and his
       | team did some improvements for the work by Yitang Zhang.
        
         | bigbillheck wrote:
         | > If published someone like Terrence Tao could write formal
         | proofs for them like he and his team did some improvements for
         | the work by Yitang Zhang.
         | 
         | From the second paragraph:
         | 
         | > George Andrews and Bruce C. Berndt (2005, 2009, 2012, 2013,
         | 2018) have published several books in which they give proofs
         | for Ramanujan's formulas included in the notebook
        
         | svat wrote:
         | The notebook (like Ramanujan's three previously known
         | notebooks) has already been published, in 5 volumes by Bruce
         | Berndt and George Andrews, with extensive annotation (e.g. just
         | flipping at random, in the third volume Chapter 6 is called
         | "Theorems about the Partition Function on Pages 189 and 182",
         | and occupies 24 pages, and indeed contains formal proofs etc).
         | A raw scan of the notebook(s) is even available online:
         | http://ramanujan.sirinudi.org
        
           | Analemma_ wrote:
           | Unfortunately the actual notebook links on that site appear
           | broken
        
       | interpjinx wrote:
       | I expect future AI models to be like Ramanujan. Has tremendous
       | intuition but can't accurately explain it's reasoning for
       | arriving at a solution.
        
       | ldjkfkdsjnv wrote:
       | I almost feel like there is a random ramanujan posting generator.
       | Every day it runs on a cron job, and with some probably something
       | about him is posted. Much like the dunning krueger effect. Some
       | topics arise with such consistent regularity. Almost makes you
       | wonder what the reasoning is
        
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