Top all-time · #2852
David Mumford
Personal blog · dam.brown.edu/people/mumford/blogmathai
David Mumford writes Applied Mathematics, a personal blog at dam.brown.edu about math and ai. Since 2012, 27 different Hacker News readers have linked it 31 times, most often “Can one explain schemes to biologists? (2014)”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (13) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link David Mumford's blog and papers for his essays on Grothendieck's mathematics, machine consciousness, stochastic models versus logical reasoning, and vision and pattern theory.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 13 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Can one explain schemes to biologists? (2014)7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2014-12-16
- Can an artificial intelligence machine be conscious? (2019)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-05-18
- /people/mumford/beyond/papers/2000b--DawningAgeStoch-NC.pdf2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-11-16
What Hacker News says?
Even Russel and Norvig is still applicable for the fundamentals, and with the rise of agenic efforts would be extremely helpful. The updates to even the Bias/Variance Dilemma (Geman 1992) are minor if you look at the original paper: https://www.dam.brown.edu/people/documents/bias-variance.pdf They were dealing with small datasets or infinite datasets, and double decent only really works when the patterns in your tes…
Comment linking /people/documents/bias-variance.pdf
on “Understanding Machine Learning: From Theory to Algorithms”Submitted Ridiculous Math Problems as a story · 219 points
HN discussioni recommend this paper to understand brain-state-in-a-box[0]. In my studies of linear algebra / calculus, we had optimum calculus reaching error minimum. help me out, i learnt it a long time ago, would "Optimum in der Infinitesimalrechnung" be optimum calculus? [0] https://www.dam.brown.edu/people/elie/am41%202012/gBSB.pdf (edit: wording)
Comment linking /people/elie/am41%202012/gBSB.pdf
on “Emergent Misalignment: Narrow finetuning can produce broadly misaligned LLMs”Submitted Grammar isn't merely part of language (2016) as a story · 124 points
HN discussionNope: http://www.dam.brown.edu/people/mumford/vision/introvision.h... Tim Gowers is interested in automated theorem proving too!
Comment linking /people/mumford/vision/introvision.html
on “Geometric Understanding of Deep Learning (2018)”Submitted Math, Beauty, and Brain Areas as a story · 41 points
HN discussionThis biographical sketch is well-written, concise, and complete (or at least it appears to be). It includes many quotes and photos that I hadn’t seen before. But I can imagine that some readers will be left wondering what was so remarkable about this guy’s work. Unfortunately, it’s hard to explain without some exposure to pure mathematics. David Mumford, who pops up in this article, has a lengthy blog post[1] on thi…
Comment linking /people/mumford/blog/2014/Grothendieck.html
on “The Anarchist Abstractionist – Who Was Alexander Grothendieck?”Submitted Can one explain schemes to biologists? (2014) as a story · 29 points
HN discussionI believe this is what the page is referring to (The Dawning of the Age of Stochasticity) https://www.dam.brown.edu/people/mumford/beyond/papers/2000b...
Comment linking /people/mumford/beyond/papers/2000b--DawningAgeStoch-NC.pdf
on “DARPA’s 23 Challenge Questions”Submitted Can one explain schemes to biologists as a story · 18 points
HN discussionIt's mentioned in the abstract of [1], but not really expanded upon. [1] http://www.dam.brown.edu/people/mumford/Papers/DigitizedVisi...
Comment linking /people/mumford/Papers/DigitizedVisionPapers--forNonCommercialUse/x03a--Stats-LeePedersen.pdf
on “Who Expected That? Extreme close-ups create a Klein Bottle.”Submitted Fields Medalist David Mumford is unhappy about mechanization and future of work as a story · 4 points
HN discussionDavid Mumford did a great job summarizing his contributions: http://www.dam.brown.edu/people/mumford/blog/2014/Grothendie... On a side note, this was an obituary invited by Nature that was surprisingly rejected for being too technical!
Comment linking /people/mumford/blog/2014/Grothendieck.html
on “Alexander Grothendieck, the secret genius of mathematics”Submitted Can an artificial intelligence machine be conscious? (2019) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionAs I said the first time this topic was posted: This article is ironic coming from such a math phobic publication as Nature: http://www.dam.brown.edu/people/mumford/blog/2014/Grothendie...
Comment linking /people/mumford/blog/2014/Grothendieck.html
on “The Unplanned Impact of Mathematics”Submitted Obfuscations in the history of Pythagorus theorem on triangles as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI am reminded of the recent obituary of Grothendieck: http://www.dam.brown.edu/people/mumford/blog/2014/Grothendie... Two extremely well-known mathematicians were asked by Nature to write an obituary for the late Grothendieck. They wrote it to be mostly understood by a nonmathematical audience, but Nature ultimately rejected the obituary on it being too technical. It is almost as if each discipline has become an isl…
Comment linking /people/mumford/blog/2014/Grothendieck.html
on “Why Is Academic Writing So Academic?”Submitted Consciousness, Robots, and DNA as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThis is ironic coming from such a math-phobic publication that regards complex numbers and "higher degree polynomials" as too befuddling for its readership: http://www.dam.brown.edu/people/mumford/blog/2014/Grothendie...
Comment linking /people/mumford/blog/2014/Grothendieck.html
on “The Unplanned Impact of Mathematics (2011)”Submitted Can an artificial intelligence machine be conscious? (David Mumford blog, 2019) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe debate is mostly about: Are opaque probabilistic models scientific? David Mumford's stance: "This paper is a meant to be a polemic which argues for a very fundamental point: that stochastic models and statistical reasoning are more relevant i) to the world, ii) to science and many parts of mathematics and iii) particularly to understanding the computations in our own minds, than exact models and logical reasonin…
Comment linking /people/mumford/beyond/papers/2000b--DawningAgeStoch-NC.pdf
on “The Norvig – Chomsky Debate on Statistical Learning in AI”Submitted The Dawning Age of Stochasticity [pdf] as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAlso read: "Can an artificial intelligence machine be conscious, part II?" http://www.dam.brown.edu/people/mumford/blog/2019/conscious2...
Comment linking /people/mumford/blog/2019/conscious2.html
on “Can an artificial intelligence machine be conscious? (2019)”Submitted David Mumford: Wake Up! [Mathematics Publication Call to Arms] as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe author, David Mumford, is known for his distinguished work in algebraic geometry, and was awarded the Fields Medal in 1974. [2] Pattern theory was formulated by Ulf Grenander to describe knowledge of the world as patterns. [3] Prof. Mumford explains that "[s]everal essential ideas brought me to realize how Grenander's Pattern Theory was the right way to understand almost all cognitive skills and especially visio…
Comment linking /people/mumford/vision/pattern.html
on “Pattern Theory: The Mathematics of Perception (D. Mumford) (2002)”Submitted AIs and Humans with Agency by David Mumford as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Math of Chip-Firing [pdf] as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Astonishing Convergence of AI and the Human Brain (2020) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Can one explain schemes to biologists as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted David Mumford on Reading Spinoza as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
