Verifiability, access, and allocation in maths
When I was talking about this post with a friend, he asked a thought-provoking question. In the post, I’d argued that I believe it should be appropriate for mathematics to consider a solution to a…
mathematics
Lesson learnt? None.
A particular line from the open statement mathematicians wrote against the design of the new Caltech Mathathon, due to happen in late October, has stuck with me: Mathematicians do not only prove theorems: they also…
The mathematician and the oracle
On August 24, Levent Alpöge (@__alpoge__) posted on X.com that they had solved a maths problem with Claude’s help in a way that was contrary to a human proof of it, albeit a reputedly unsatisfactory…
Where do scientists communicate their work?
A group of Spanish researchers analysed the mentions of scientific papers authored by scientists (affiliated with Spain) on the social media, on Wikipedia, and on news outlets, blogs and policy documents to understand where the…
Is mathematics real?
I didn’t think to think about the realism of mathematics until I got to high school, and encountered quantum mechanics. Mathematics was at first just another subject, before becoming a tool with which to think…
Science v. tech, à la Cixin Liu
A fascinating observation by Cixin Liu in an interview in Public Books, to John Plotz and translated by Pu Wang (numbers added): … technology precedes science. (1) Way before the rise of modern science, there…
The worst poem ever
I’m just a lousy science journalist, writing the worst poem ever.
The literature of metaphysics (or, ‘Losing your marbles’ )
For a while now, I’ve been intent on explaining stuff from particle physics. A lot of it is intuitive if you go beyond the mathematics and are ready to look at packets of energy as…
“God is a mathematician.”
The more advanced the topics I deal with in physics, the more stark I observe the divergence from philosophy and mathematics to be. While one seems to drill right down to the bedrock of all…