Top all-time · #331
John Carlos Baez
Personal blog · johncarlosbaez.wordpress.commathscience
John Carlos Baez writes Azimuth, a personal blog at johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com about math and science. Since 2011, 158 different Hacker News readers have linked it 397 times, most often “Mathematical Patterns That Eventually Fail”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-31, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 15 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link John Baez's Azimuth blog for math and physics posts such as the continuum, ordinals and temperament series, which commenters find readable and approachable.
- Recommended for · 15 comments
- Called a favorite and 'really interesting', 'very readable' and 'approachable'; the continuum series and Ramanujan's easiest formula post are singled out.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Mathematical Patterns That Eventually Fail8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2018-09-21
- /6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2015-07-06
- Getting to the Bottom of Noether’s Theorem4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-06-29
- /4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2015-09-07
- Complex Adaptive System Design (Part 1)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-10-03
- Large Countable Ordinals, Part 13 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2016-07-18
- Norbert Blum on P versus NP3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2017-08-15
- The Color of Infinite Temperature3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-01-17
- Insanely Long Proofs (2012)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-07-20
- Computing the Uncomputable3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-04-03
What Hacker News says?
+1 for John Baez, one of my favorite math writer. Especially the Azimuth blog: https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?”Submitted 42 as a story · 528 points
HN discussionThat's not the question you asked. If you want to know more about the context of this specific paper then you need to (a) wait for the people in the area to start writing explanations, or (b) ask more specific questions about specific terms. A good place to start to get a sense of what's going on with this specific paper is this thread, but more particularly, the articles linked from it. One that I think is a great…
Comment linking /2017/08/15/norbert-blum-on-p-versus-np/
on “A Solution of the P versus NP Problem?”Submitted Applied Category Theory as a story · 383 points
HN discussionJohn Baez has a bit of a discussion here: https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2017/08/15/norbert-blum...
Comment linking /2017/08/15/norbert-blum-on-p-versus-np/
on “A Solution of the P versus NP Problem?”Submitted What Is Entropy? as a story · 345 points
HN discussionMaybe. Jocelyn Ireson-Paine has a deep knowledge of the problems and some solutions for spreadsheets: https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2014/02/05/category-the... Paine has long worked with the European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group (eusprig.org) and has used category theory to develop a system in Prolog called Excelsior about which he says "Excel lacks features for modular design. Had it such features, as do…
Comment linking /2014/02/05/category-theory-for-better-spreadsheets/
on “I was wrong about spreadsheets (2017)”Submitted The Color of Infinite Temperature as a story · 332 points
HN discussion> I'm not looking to break through the undecidability barrier That, too, was far from clear. You said you were tackling this problem: > what is the property of a program that makes it undecidable? and I told you: > That is itself an undecidable question! and explained why (at least three times). And AFAICT you still don't get it because you still say you want to: > implement an algorithm that can prove theorems we a…
Comment linking /2016/06/29/large-countable-ordinals-part-1/
on “Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach”Submitted Planets in the Fourth Dimension as a story · 252 points
HN discussionYes. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Baez for some basic background. See http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/ for more articles from him if you enjoyed this one. One of my favorites is http://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2012/12/27/our-galactic-... which describes our galactic neighborhood. Everyone knows that Alpha Centauri is our nearest star. But I bet you don't know a lot more about it. It is a much more comp…
Comment linking /2012/12/27/our-galactic-environment/
on “42”Submitted Dead Stars Don’t Radiate as a story · 246 points
HN discussionYou might find John Baez's article on this interesting. https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/ice/ He covers both the basics, and some of the reasons why he, as a mathematician, finds the variety of ice structures interesting. Of note, he mentions that Ice VII (the type of ice discovered in the article) has previously been created by Sandia's Z Machine http://www.sandia.gov/z-machine/
Comment linking /2012/04/15/ice/
on “Found trapped in a diamond: a type of ice not known on Earth”Submitted How I Learned to Love Algebraic Geometry as a story · 243 points
HN discussionAlso by the same author: Applied Category Theory 2020 https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2019/12/23/applied-cate...
Comment linking /2019/12/23/applied-category-theory-2020-adjoint-school/
on “Category Theory for Programmers (2014) [pdf]”Submitted Ice as a story · 232 points
HN discussionTai-Danae Bradley, the author of this post, has also written an illustrated booklet (freely available) about Category Theory: https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2018/09/18/what-is-appl...
Comment linking /2018/09/18/what-is-applied-category-theory/
on “An invitation to category theory”Submitted Tritone Substitutions as a story · 220 points
HN discussionhttps://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2019/09/18/divesting/ Today it is large corporations which have the greatest power over daily life, and they are far more susceptible to pressure and change then the insulated bureaucracies of governments. Thankfully Bill and many others knew this years ago, and started a divestment campaign of breathtaking magnitude...
Comment linking /2019/09/18/divesting/
on “Fossil fuel divestment has ‘zero’ climate impact, says Bill Gates”Submitted Ramanujan's Easiest Formula as a story · 215 points
HN discussionFrequently: http://www.economist.com/ - my second best feed (after HN) Occasionally: http://www.datatau.com/ - HN for data science https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/ - Mathematics, Theoretical Physics https://terrytao.wordpress.com/ - Mathematics http://slatestarcodex.com/ - Less Wrong-kind stuff (the guy writes frequent and well, but somehow too verbosely) http://visualizing.org/ - data visualizations A bit of G…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What tech blogs, podcasts do you follow outside of HN?”Submitted Mathematical Patterns That Eventually Fail as a story · 192 points
HN discussionI love John Baez's blog too! But actually I think his long winded, mathematically challenging posts are more interesting. Like this series https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/classical-me... https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2012/01/23/classical-me... https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2021/09/23/classical-me... https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2021/09/26/classical-me... An excerpt from the firs…
Comment linking /2021/09/26/classical-mechanics-versus-thermodynamics-part-4/
on “The Color of Infinite Temperature”Submitted Civilizational Collapse, Part 4 as a story · 190 points
HN discussionIf you want to get a taste of some of what Ramanujan seems to have been occupied with, the mathematical physicist John Baez explained "Ramanujan's easiest formula" in an approachable way https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2020/11/18/ramanujans-e...
Comment linking /2020/11/18/ramanujans-easiest-formula/
on “The Textbook That Unleashed Ramanujan's Genius”Submitted Levels of Excellence as a story · 182 points
HN discussionnow you can. ok, well soon :) but the theory is in place and works. Also stochastic Petri nets are actually equivalent to Feynman diagrams in a precise sense ( https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/petri-net-pr... ), they could be the Feynman diagrams of functional programming :)
Comment linking /2012/12/20/petri-net-programming-part-2/
on “Visual Programming Doesn’t Suck”Submitted Pi and the Golden Ratio as a story · 172 points
HN discussionBoth axes are irrelevant (not that the statistics have any validity: itsajokeson.jpg) The real question is: what tools are people who write truly excellent blogs using? Rakhim himself is using Hugo. Gwern organises their blog on a long-content basis using online services but a custom software and design mix, static site. https://www.gwern.net/About#long-site John Baez's Azimuth blog runs on Wordpress. https://johnca…
Comment linking /
on “Blogging vs. Blog Setups”Submitted Quark Stars as a story · 135 points
HN discussion
