[HN Gopher] Where do those undergraduate divisibility problems c...
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Where do those undergraduate divisibility problems come from?
Author : mathgenius
Score : 93 points
Date : 2025-01-20 09:41 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (grossack.site)
(TXT) w3m dump (grossack.site)
| jmount wrote:
| More on integer valued polynomials:
| https://cameroncounts.wordpress.com/2017/01/31/polynomials-t...
| quasarj wrote:
| That python code is horrid.
|
| But, 99.9% of every other glyph on the page is over my head, so I
| guess I haven't ground to stand on.
| lqet wrote:
| > That python code is horrid.
|
| Just out of curiosity, why do you find the code horrid? There
| are really only 9 lines of code that aren't glue code, and
| apart from the error prints (which are really irrelevant for
| these demonstration purposes), the code looks basically fine to
| me.
|
| EDIT: seen = [] for b in boards:
| if set(seen).isdisjoint(orbit(b)): seen.append(b)
|
| Ah, well...
|
| EDIT 2: also, see comment below, it's not Python
| mitchellpkt wrote:
| edit: nevermind, it's sage code not python code
| IanCal wrote:
| It's not python, it's sage, so those actually work.
| boothby wrote:
| Sage is a Python (and the snippet you pasted works fine in
| Python). And I'm also curious what would qualify that code as
| "horrid." I'd make light suggestion to improve performance by
| making `seen` a set right off the bat, but for this size of
| problem, that sort of detail is unimportant. Calling
| somebody's code "horrid" without even understanding what it's
| doing isn't a productive approach to, well; anything, really.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| You perfectly summarized the reaction of any programmer looking
| at the work of a mathematician.
| hinkley wrote:
| Math pages on Wikipedia have this bad. I don't know whether
| the programming concepts pages are more sanely written or I
| already understand the circular reasoning. But it feels like
| they're more approachable.
| rectang wrote:
| The math pages on Wikipedia value correctness above lay
| comprehensibility. It's easy to understand how this
| happens: a learned mathematician points out that a
| simplification for the purposes of making an explanation
| more approachable is not actually correct, so the
| explanation gets desimplified... and repeat ad absurdum
| until most math pages on Wikipedia cater primarily to
| experts and are too advanced for a good fraction of the
| audience.
| gopher_space wrote:
| The programming pages use symbols that exist on your
| keyboard and deconstruct their process.
|
| The math pages look like they're trying to be Perl one-
| liners. Why is everything so jammed up, Mathematics?
| chongli wrote:
| _Why is everything so jammed up, Mathematics?_
|
| It's not. The language of mathematics is prose, usually
| written in English. The formulae are meant to illustrate
| the relationships in a very concise way but they're
| meaningless without the accompanying prose.
| chongli wrote:
| I love the math pages on Wikipedia but I have a math
| degree. They are written (written clearly and concisely)
| for mathematicians.
|
| If you're a programmer (but don't have a math degree) then
| I would offer up API docs as a comparison. They are written
| for you, the user of the API, to be as concise and
| straightforward as possible so that you can get up and
| running with the API. API docs are definitely not written
| for beginners who have never written a line of code (or a
| line of code in the language the API is written in) before.
|
| If there's one complaint I may entertain, it's that
| Wikipedia isn't supposed to be a resource for specialists.
| It's intended to be an encyclopedia for a general audience.
| But then by that reasoning, many of these math pages on
| Wikipedia probably ought to be deleted outright because
| they're simply too specialized in the first place. So we're
| left with the dilemma: do we keep these articles as-is (and
| keep mathematicians happy) or do we delete them outright
| because they're too specialized?
|
| The third option, rewriting them for a general audience, is
| likely to run afoul of Aesop's fable #721 "The miller, his
| son, and the donkey" [1]. You'll get a highly technical and
| complex article that explains far too much and buries its
| insights in overly verbose and cumbersome prose (which
| cannot assume any prerequisite mathematical knowledge).
| It'll please neither the mathematician nor the general
| audience member.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_miller,_his_son_and_t
| he_do...
| GuB-42 wrote:
| One of my preferred example:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremsstrahlung#Quantum_mechan
| i...
|
| It is actually physics, but for all I know it could just as
| well summon Cthulhu.
| dang wrote:
| [stub for offtopicness]
| mjd wrote:
| I feel silly saying this, but I wish the author would use more
| periods and fewer exclamation marks.
| tromp wrote:
| Elaine Benes would be proud of their writing...
| leetcrew wrote:
| I was in the pool!
| gazchop wrote:
| Oh this is nothing. One of my colleagues does that and adds
| random colour changes, underlines and font face changes. It's
| like working with a serial killer.
| gota wrote:
| Maybe he was a teenager on IRC in the late 90s or early 00s
| and decided to never change
|
| Thinking about it I guess MSN messenger and My Space also
| allowed/encouraged font shenanigans? My memory falters
| andrepd wrote:
| Ahh. I honestly miss that amount of self-expression,
| garish as it was. Or rather, I intensely dislike the
| mono-culture where every vertical video with one-word
| subtitles looks the same.
| amne wrote:
| You're the second commenter, so far, to mention exclamation
| marks. What do they mean to you that would bother you so much
| to point it out, or anyone for that matter? I haven't even
| noticed them until I read the comments here on hn.
| micaeked wrote:
| Not gp, but I feel similarly. For me, I can't help read it
| with emphasis. As in, the voice in my head gets all fancy
| in an annoying way. If you imagine someone in person
| reading it out-loud with exaggerated emphasis, that's what
| it feels like. Same thing with comic books for me, the
| sprinkled bolded words in dialog are really grating.
| Etheryte wrote:
| To me it's fairly similar to someone making excessive use
| of CAPS LOCK. It can be used as a stylistic choice at
| times, but use it TOO MUCH and it just becomes DISTRACTING.
| Minor49er wrote:
| I DON'T SEE A PROBLEM WITH THIS EITHER! BUT I EMPATHIZE! I
| GET COMMENTS FROM PEOPLE SAYING THAT I'M SOMEHOW YELLING AT
| THEM ALL THE TIME BUT I'M ACTUALLY SITTING IN SILENCE,
| TYPING QUIETLY ON A MEMBRANE KEYBOARD! LOL???
| Etheryte wrote:
| Interesting topic, but the writing style is so tedious that it
| really subtracts from the content as a whole. There's on
| average one exclamation mark per paragraph. Surely every single
| thought you write down isn't groundbreaking enough to warrant
| that.
| bwfan123 wrote:
| I beg to differ, I think the writing conveys beautifully, the
| deeper abstract ideas embedded in what appears to be a simple
| problem - hence, it captures the essential spirit of what
| math is about
| LPisGood wrote:
| I like when the author's personality shines through, and
| frankly I can't imagine finding occasional exclamation marks
| _tedious_ of all things. I just don't take things so
| seriously, I suppose.
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(page generated 2025-01-20 23:00 UTC)