Top all-time · #1819
Doron Zeilberger
Personal blog · math.rutgers.edumathscience
Doron Zeilberger writes Department of Mathematics, a personal blog at math.rutgers.edu about math and science. Since 2008, 43 different Hacker News readers have linked it 52 times, most often “The Mathematical Opinions of Dr. Doron Zeilberger”. The last post was in 2015, but the archive is still widely read.
Department of Mathematics, The School of Arts and Sciences, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Most-linked posts?
- The Mathematical Opinions of Dr. Doron Zeilberger6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2009-01-10
- Real Analysis Is a Degenerate Case of Discrete Analysis [pdf]3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-02-18
- The Shocking State of Contemporary "Mathematics"2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-10-31
- Guess What? Programming is Even More Fun Than Proving2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-03-04
- Doron Zeilberger on computer-assisted proofs2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-03-04
- Don't Fall In Love With Your Model: The Cautionary Tale of my Recent proof that P=NP 2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-04-16
- /~zeilberg/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-07-15
- Mathematical exploration of the game SET [pdf]2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-04-29
What Hacker News says?
Don’t forget Alan Smithee, a pseudonym used when a director wants to disclaim credit for a film: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Smithee Doron Zeilberger, a mathematician, coauthors papers with his computer, which he refers to by the name Shalosh Ekhad: http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/ekhad.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doron_Zeilberger
Comment linking /~zeilberg/ekhad.html
on “More South Korean academics caught naming kids as co-authors”Submitted The Shocking State of Contemporary "Mathematics" as a story · 55 points
HN discussionThat said, I do wish I were at AIM's meeting on the Riemann Hypothesis :-) https://aimath.org/rh2018/ The lecture videos are online and are a good way to get both historical context and connection to how people are thinking about it currently. This seminar talk on how to fail to prove RH was also great https://www.math.rutgers.edu/news-events/list-all-events/ica...
Comment linking /news-events/list-all-events/icalrepeat.detail/2020/09/29/10896/-/how-to-fail-to-prove-the-riemann-hypothesis
on “How I learned to love and fear the Riemann Hypothesis”Submitted The Human Obsession With "Formal Proofs" is a Waste of Time as a story · 38 points
HN discussionThis is an interesting "book" that reduces geometry to automated symbol pushing. http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/GT.html
Comment linking /~zeilberg/GT.html
on “Harvard 1869 entrance exam”Submitted Doron Zeilberger on computer-assisted proofs as a story · 27 points
HN discussionThis reminds me of http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/Opinion71.html , where a number of prominent mathematicians and computer scientists are traced to an Israeli mathematical magazine for young people. These are certainly not kids who had no calculation skills. They wrestled with difficult problems and developed great problem-solving skills that have served them in their careers. Incidentally, Zeilberger is defi…
Comment linking /~zeilberg/OPINIONS.html
on “Stop teaching calculating; Start teaching math”Submitted The Mathematical Opinions of Dr. Doron Zeilberger as a story · 17 points
HN discussionOn the subject of free books from Rutgers professors, check out http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~sontag/FTP_DIR/systems_biology_... if you are interested in mathematical modeling in biology.
Comment linking /~sontag/FTP_DIR/systems_biology_notes.pdf
on “Introduction to Signal Processing”Submitted Don't Fall In Love With Your Model: The Cautionary Tale of my Recent proof that P=NP as a story · 13 points
HN discussionIt reminded me of what Dr. Doron Zeilberger has been repeating ad-nauseam ( eg: http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/Opinion36.html ) Ultimately automated theorem provers are going to rule. Dr.Z actually takes the very radical stand of calling all paper-pencil math proofs of Paul Erdos trivial, whereas "Theorems that only computers can prove...are not quite as trivial". The fact that we have to reach out to a compu…
Comment linking /~zeilberg/Opinion36.html
on “Mathematicians Solve Minimum Sudoku Problem”Submitted What About "Quarter Einsteins"? as a story · 5 points
HN discussionOne of my favorite Dirac stories "An interview with Dirac": http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~greenfie/mill_courses/math421/i...
Comment linking /~greenfie/mill_courses/math421/int.html
on “Paul Dirac: The unsung genius”Submitted My Two Favorite Pedagogical Principles (2005) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI posted it more for its interest (to me) as a long scientific article from a popular news outlet on a topic I'd never heard about before. It looks like it may be a re-working of this older article : https://www.quantamagazine.org/20140416-times-arrow-traced-t... and of course the underlying scientific papers: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1367-2630/14/1/013... http://math.rutgers.edu/~oldstein/papers/Ty…
Comment linking /~oldstein/papers/TypicalDecayLett03.pdf
on “The Quantum Origin of Time”Submitted RENE: a Maple package for stating and proving theorems in Geometry as a story · 3 points
HN discussionAs another scientist I have to strongly second this . Some things might take real work on your part to understand though. Even within different fields of mathematics there are difficulties in understanding (complaint about this: http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/Opinion104.html ).
Comment linking /~zeilberg/Opinion104.html
on “Keeping computers from ending science's reproducibility”Submitted Dr. Z's Opinions as a story · 2 points
HN discussionGrothendieck "died" in the sense meant by Paul Erdos (stopped doing new mathematical research) at a surprisingly young age, while Israel Gelfand kept going into his nineties, not "dying" (ceasing to be a mathematician) until he "left" (died in the usual sense of the term). http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/Opinion62.html Gelfand was a mathematician who also cared deeply about mathematics pedagogy, and his textbo…
Comment linking /~zeilberg/Opinion62.html
on “The mathematics generation gap”Submitted Doron Zeilberger's Collection of Quotes as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe mechanics are important, and calc 1 is the course in which they are taught. If the mechanics of algebra and calculus are not second nature to you, everything that follows will be almost impossible. Similarly, when learning programming, you need to learn to write syntactically correct code, and when learning a foreign language you need to memorize vocabulary. It isn't fun, but it is necessary. Later courses are m…
Comment linking /grad/phd_requirements/written_qual.html
on “Gladwell: Getting In, The social logic of Ivy League admissions”Submitted Mathematical exploration of the game SET [pdf] as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThankyou for writing this. As a humble seer trying to find his way in this world of bean-counters, I really appreciate it. Doron Zeilberger has written about this aswell: """ The usual names are "theory-builders" vs. "problem-solvers", but these two protoypes of mathematicians also appear under various other appellations. Some other names are strategists vs. tacticians, "monkeys that climb up the tree" vs. "monkeys…
Comment linking /~zeilberg/Opinion95.html
on “Physicist Fotini Markopoulou traded quantum gravity for industrial design”Submitted Dr. Zeilberger's Crystal Clear Calculus Handouts (First Edition) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionYeah, but this is so boring and oh-so-run-of-the-mill. (If the mafiosi could read the following paper before rushing to click down-vote, then I'd be much obliged. http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/mamarimY/DM85.pdf )
Comment linking /~zeilberg/mamarimY/DM85.pdf
on “Visualizing matrix multiplication as a linear combination”Submitted Real Analysis Is a Degenerate Case of Discrete Analysis [pdf] as a story · 1 points
HN discussionCorrection, tons of physicists use real values (or complex real values) in their calculations . That doesn't imply that the corresponding values in the world are irrational, transcendental, infinitely-precise, etc. There are a few ways we can avoid the reals in physics. Abstractly, there are results such as Skolem's "paradox" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skolem%27s_paradox ) which tell us that theories involving…
Comment linking /~zeilberg/OPINIONS.html
on “Khinchin's Constant”Submitted “Real” Analysis is a degenerate case of of discrete analysis [pdf] as a story · 1 points
HN discussionOff-topic, but it's interesting how he's reimplemented a substantial fraction of Haskell's Prelude (base library) in Mathematica, probably without knowing it: http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~erowland/programs/ListTricks.m .
Comment linking /~erowland/programs/ListTricks.m
on “Rutgers Graduate Student Finds New Prime-Generating Formula”Submitted Guess What? Programming is Even More Fun Than Proving as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
