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Posted by matthewsinclair 1 day ago

Terence Tao explains 6 essential mathematical concepts [video](www.youtube.com)
313 points | 34 commentspage 2
bobajeff 7 hours ago|
I really enjoyed this video (watched it the other day). It makes me feel like it's possible for me to understand the math that I'm currently trying to understand.
nexacoreai 2 hours ago||
wow, that's really nice
matthewsinclair 9 hours ago||
Apologies for the typo. I’ve asked mods to fix it.
matthewsinclair 9 hours ago|
Looks like it’s been fixed. Thanks.
mc32 4 hours ago||
Maybe he was joking -not sure but around the 5:45 mark he says "irrational" in irrational numbers comes from the Latin for insane or unreasonable. But just before that he defines the numbers as not being able to be expressed as a ratio (that's what we all learn). Just seems odd he'd juxta that. Or it's dry wit.
thaumasiotes 34 minutes ago|
Well...

https://www.etymonline.com/word/irrational

> The mathematical sense "inexpressible in ordinary numbers" is from late 14c. in English, from use of the Latin word as a translation of Greek alogon in Euclid.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/ratio

> The mathematical sense of "relation between two similar magnitudes in respect to quantity," measured by the number of times one contains the other, is attested in English from 1650s (it also was a sense in Greek logos)

We can cross-check dictionary entries. The standard dictionary of Ancient Greek fully backs this up:

> λόγος

> II. 2 Math., ratio, proportion

The standard dictionary of Latin doesn't mention this particular sense. (A negative is harder to cite, but you can check it here: https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext... )

The senses that the Greek word and the Latin word have in common are those of reasoning in general and numeric computation in specific. You might guess that "irrational numbers" are named for their inability to be computed. (Or, if you're only looking at Lewis and Short, you might guess that they are named by reference to an inability to think methodically; this sense exists in Latin and indeed still persists in the English word "irrational". Insanity would usually be represented by another word, presumably something more like dementialis than irrationalis.)

However, ratio is the conventional translation of the Greek logos, and since we're told that "rational" (of numbers) comes from a translation of Greek, it seems fair to attribute an existing Greek sense to the translated word too. So the best analysis does appear to be that "irrational numbers" are named, as you might expect, for the fact that they cannot be represented as integer ratios.

Agentus 8 hours ago||
i blinked and read terrence howard. i was like good god
stuxnet79 7 hours ago|
For those not in the know, Terrence Howard's dreams of a career in Astrophysics were eviscerated after Neil Degrasse Tyson reviewed his "Theory of Everything" paper [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uLi1I3G2N4

kelvo_ran 1 hour ago||
[dead]
pixelpoet 9 hours ago|
At least spell his name correctly, my goodness...

Terence Tao.

dang 9 hours ago||
Can't believe we missed that. Fixed now. Thanks!
129476 9 hours ago||
[flagged]
femiagbabiaka 9 hours ago||
It was expected that people without established credibility would be looked down on for using AI, but it's been weird to see people with all the credibility in the world lose it for embracing AI.
orf 9 hours ago||||
What credibility has he lost?
femiagbabiaka 8 hours ago||
To sensible people? None. But the amount of criticism of his work that boils down to "he uses AI" is undeniable.
orf 8 hours ago||
Can you share some of the criticism? I’ve not seen any from anyone real.
pfdietz 8 hours ago||||
It's weird to believe he's lost credibility.
nutjob2 8 hours ago|||
Tao gives or takes credibility from AI, not the other way around.
oliculipolicula 3 hours ago||
Is Tao the rising angel? Or AI the falling ape?

--Another Terry, Perhaps

AI-avatar-of-Tao wielded by an internet rando lies to or gets fooled by Tao, not the other way around

--Me, attempting to take your Untouchable* joke all the way to a (sociopathic, one-party) joke

*https://archive.ph/2023.11.28-152809/https://www.astralcodex...