Re: Abolish Fractions???? the nutty professor 3 -> out now !!

quasi wrote:

On Tue, 05 Feb 2008 20:00:25 -0800, The World Wide
Wade
<aderamey.addw@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article
<amvhq39d2puni0e4f160qhpos054rivt6v@xxxxxxx>,
Angus Rodgers <twirlip@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Tue, 05 Feb 2008 18:59:49 -0500, quasi
<quasi@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

But if you watch the video,


<http://www.sas.upenn.edu/home/news/sixtysec_lectures
_archive.html#D>

it will be (almost) immediately obvious that he's
not serious -- it
was just a spoof. In other words, he's just
kidding!

But he got taken literally, both by the news
media, and by others as
well. Many sci.math regulars took it more
seriously than they should
have for the simple reason that the idea was
presented by a well
known, highly respected mathematician. In other
words, "The Emperor's
Clothes" phenomenon.

I'll proudly point out that even before watching
the video, I wasn't
fooled for a minute.

But calling him a "kook" isn't the same as saying
that he's
kidding. (A "kook" is presumably kidding himself,
which is
not the same as someone intentionally kidding
others.)

But it just goes to show how dangerous kidding
can be. Given that he
actually _is_ kidding (I mean he really is, isn't
he?),

I have to say, it still isn't obvious to me what
he is doing,
even after watching the video three times. (But I
do have
some difficulty reading facial expressions -
perhaps I'm a
bit autistic, I don't know.)

I'm with you here. I don't trust the news reports,
and the video
doesn't convince me it is a spoof. Recall that
George Andrews, an
eminent mathematician (discoverer of the "lost
notebooks" of
Ramanujan) and member of the National Academy of
Sciences, responding
negativley to the "down with fractions!" business as
if it were a
seriously proposed idea.

I just did a Google search on "George Andrews" "down
with fractions"
and came up with this quote ...

"George Andrews is smarter than I am, and he says
Dennis’ idea is
half-baked (rim shot, please). George is also a math
professor and
president-elect of the American Mathematical Society.
Yeah, he’s smart
all right.

“All of this is absurd,” he said. “No wonder
mathematical achievements
in the country are so abysmal.”

Note -- George Andrews calls DeTurck's idea
"half-baked" and "absurd"
-- not so far off from my way of putting it ("he's a
kook").

Of course, I still don't really believe DeTurck was
really serious,
but hey, you never know -- anyone can degenerate into
kookdom, even a
previously well respected professor.

quasi

well stick with the " real mathematicians " like

Riemann , Matheyasevich and Wiles forever.

and it will be less likely that you find such stupid garbage claims.

well i hope Wiles will never get crazy or else the impact might be a disaster.

who is this so-called good prof anyways ??

abolish fractions is the first i hear from him , and thats not giving a good impression to me ( or non-USA ! ).

( i did hear from george andrews though )

regards
tommy1729
.