[HN Gopher] How Lewis Carroll computed determinants (2023)
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How Lewis Carroll computed determinants (2023)
Author : tzury
Score : 119 points
Date : 2025-12-26 19:03 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.johndcook.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.johndcook.com)
| messe wrote:
| HN title filter cut off the initial "How".
|
| You can manually edit it back in.
| marcusestes wrote:
| "Drop the 'how.' It's cleaner."
| vharuck wrote:
| It gives it a different implication. As I read it, an article
| titled "Lewis Carroll Computed Determinates" has three
| possible subjects:
|
| 1. Literally, Carroll would do matrix math. I know, like many
| on HN, that he was a mathematician. So this would be a dull
| and therefore unlikely subject.
|
| 2. Carroll invented determinates. This doesn't really fit the
| timeline of math history, so I doubt it.
|
| 3. Carroll computed determinates, and this was surprising.
| Maybe because we thought he was a bad mathematician, or the
| method had recently been invented and we don't know how he
| learned of it. This is slightly plausible.
|
| 4. (The actual subject). Carroll invented a method for
| computing determinates. A mathematician inventing a math
| technique makes sense, but the title doesn't. It'd be like
| saying "Newton and Leibnitz Used Calculus." Really burying
| the lede.
|
| Of course, this could've been avoided had the article not
| gone with a click-bait style title. A clearer one might've
| been "Lewis Carroll's Method for Calculating Determinates Is
| Probably How You First Learned to Do It." It's long, but I'm
| not a pithy writer. I'm sure somebody could do better.
| miltonlost wrote:
| "How Lewis Carroll Computed Determinates" is fine and not
| clickbait because it provides all the pertinent information
| and is an accurate summary of its contents. Clickbait would
| be "you would never guess how this author/mathematician
| computed determinants" since it requires a clickthrough to
| know who the person is. How is perfectly fine IMO to have
| in the title because I personally would expect the How to
| be long enough to warrant a necessary clickthrough due to
| the otherwise required title length.
| esafak wrote:
| > Arrange the given block, if necessary, so that no ciphers
| [zeros] occur in its interior.
|
| I forgot that _cipher_ used to have a different meaning: zero,
| via Arabic. In some languages it means digit.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| lol I never made that connection -- in Turkish, zero is sifir,
| which does sound a lot like cipher. Also, password is sifre,
| which again sounds similar. Looking online, apparently the path
| is sifr (Arabic, meaning zero) -> cifre (French, first meaning
| zero, then any numeral, then coded message) -> sifre (Turkish,
| code/cipher)
| celaleddin wrote:
| Nice! Imagine the second meaning going back to Arabic and now
| it's a full loop! It can even override the original meaning
| given enough time and popularity (not especially for "zero",
| but possibly for another full-loop word).
| cgio wrote:
| The Turkish password word may be the same used for signature?
| I suspect so, because in Greek we have the Greek word for
| signature but also a Turkish loan word tziphra (djifra).
| jacquesm wrote:
| Dutch too: "Cijfer", German, "Ziffer", French: "Chifre",
| Spanish: "Cifra".
| estomagordo wrote:
| Swedish: "Siffra"
| kazinator wrote:
| > Dodgson's original paper from 1867 is quite readable,
| surprisingly so given that math notation and terminology changes
| over time.
|
| Given that Jabberwocky is also quite readable, we shouldn't be
| too astonished.
| 01jonny01 wrote:
| When I'm not cognitively depleted from over working and kids I'd
| really like to sit down and read this properly.
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