Timeline for A mathematical idea "abstract enough to be useless for physics"
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
21 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 12, 2010 at 2:26 | vote | accept | Jérôme JEAN-CHARLES | ||
| Dec 10, 2010 at 20:22 | comment | added | Jeff Harvey | Whatever XXX is and whoever said it, I doubt it is true. | |
| Sep 11, 2010 at 6:39 | comment | added | LSpice | Err, sorry, $P = MAN$. | |
| Sep 11, 2010 at 6:38 | comment | added | LSpice | Jérôme, I think long names cause much more harm than they do good, at least unless we can achieve the trivial task of settling on a uniform typeface convention. For example, $G = MAN$ would surely seem bizarre to someone on the look-out for multi-character variable names. | |
| Sep 9, 2010 at 23:43 | comment | added | Jérôme JEAN-CHARLES | The reason I used XXX ( as ???) is like x in math except that being a computer scientist I like longer and more expressive words, a rather unconcious move. I crave for the day when longer names will be an habit in math and physics. Note that it does not means I wish all single letter notation to be replaced by a longer word , but some rules for partially using long notations to alleviate the polymorphic symbol usage. This is 21th century : we have computer ( Yet I agree they so far useless to provide decent interface in writing latex). | |
| Sep 7, 2010 at 18:27 | comment | added | Will Jagy | Jose, Paul Ginsparg and I went to the same high school, he was a year ahead. He did not make the notable alumni list in wikipedia, maybe I can edit that en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syosset_High_School as he has a separate wikipedia page. I didn't make their list either but am not notable. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ginsparg $$ $$ L Spice and Cam, Thanks. This was an artifact of brief communications as in a comment box. I was assuming that there was some first, very famous user of the phrase `sane notation' who was being quoted. | |
| Sep 7, 2010 at 13:05 | comment | added | Cam McLeman | @L Spice: Indeed! Sorry for the confusion, Will. | |
| Sep 7, 2010 at 11:26 | comment | added | José Figueroa-O'Farrill | @Victor: the XXX in the arXiv precursor is the XXX of the Heisenberg model. Paul Ginsparg initially ran the arXiv from one of the computers in his research group and indeed there were also other computers called XXZ and XYZ, IIRC. The change of name didn't come soon enough, since URLs containing xxx were being increasingly blocked in many places :) | |
| Sep 7, 2010 at 7:35 | answer | added | Georges Elencwajg | timeline score: 14 | |
| Sep 7, 2010 at 5:59 | comment | added | LSpice | @Will, I think that Cam was suggesting that physicists' notation is intimidating and bizarre to mathematicians (as is mathematicians' to everyone else, probably). I suspect that any deeper reading goes astray. | |
| Sep 7, 2010 at 4:32 | comment | added | Will Jagy | Dear Everyone, I honestly do not know what the phrase "sane notation" might mean, who might use it, why it is funny in this situation. I actually don't. I humbly request that someone explain this. I'm not judging anything either. I don't know what it means. | |
| Sep 7, 2010 at 3:42 | comment | added | Victor Protsak | Cam, I am surprised you haven't thought of the XXX server (the progenitor of the arXiv), xxx.lanl.gov. Of course, there is also the XXX Heisenberg model, even if it's much duller (in the sense of being comparatively easy to solve) than the XXZ and XYZ models. | |
| Sep 7, 2010 at 3:22 | comment | added | Will Jagy | I looked at it magnified, it was a typewriter where the letter m was extra wide and the spacing varied a bit, so "om" or "am" sometimes appear to be "an" to Google. | |
| Sep 7, 2010 at 3:17 | comment | added | Will Jagy | Well, Erdos used the phrase, math-inst.hu/~p_erdos/1970-16.pdf | |
| Sep 7, 2010 at 3:01 | comment | added | Will Jagy | Cam, what does "sane notation" mean? Enquiring minds want to know. Unless it's secret. | |
| Sep 7, 2010 at 2:07 | comment | added | Cam McLeman | XXX is "sane notation." :) | |
| Sep 7, 2010 at 1:47 | comment | added | Steve Huntsman | "...the theory of numbers is, because of its supreme uselessness, the queen of mathematics...The great modern achievements of applied mathematics have been in relativity and quantum mechanics, and these subjects are, at present at any rate, almost as ‘useless’ as the theory of numbers...No one foresaw the applications of matrices and groups and other purely mathematical theories to modern physics, and it may be that some of the ‘highbrow’ applied mathematics will become ‘useful’ in as unexpected a way; but...it is what is commonplace and dull that counts for practical life." --GHH | |
| Sep 7, 2010 at 1:43 | comment | added | Steve Huntsman | "Very little of mathematics is useful practically, and that that little is comparatively dull. The ‘seriousness’ of a mathematical theorem lies, not in its practical consequences, which are usually negligible, but in the significance of the mathematical ideas which it connects." --GHH | |
| Sep 7, 2010 at 1:22 | comment | added | Victor Protsak | 1. I've edited the title and the question. 2. Are you sure you aren't thinking of Hardy and number theory (factorization)? | |
| Sep 7, 2010 at 1:21 | history | edited | Victor Protsak | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
syntax, tags
|
| Sep 7, 2010 at 1:09 | history | asked | Jérôme JEAN-CHARLES | CC BY-SA 2.5 |