One day Shizuo Kakutani was teaching a class at Yale. He wrote down a lemma on the blackboard and announced that the proof was obvious. One student timidly raised his hand and said that it wasn't obvious to him. Could Kakutani explain?
After several moments' thought, Kakutani realized that he could not himself prove the lemma. He apologized, and said that he would report back at their next class meeting.
After class, Kakutani, went straight to his office. He labored for quite a time and found that he could not prove the pesky lemma. He skipped lunch and went to the library to track down the lemma. After much work, he finally found the original paper. The lemma was stated clearly and succinctly. For the proof, the author had written, 'Exercise for the reader.'
In the early sixties, Grothendieck visited Harvard while Zariski was still a faculty member. Once, while Zariski was lecturing in a seminar, Grothendieck kept asking him why he didn't prove his result for all schemes, not just varieties, but Zariski simply responded that it didn't work. Eventually, Grothendieck could stand it no longer and went to the blackboard and began writing down a proof for schemes. While he did so, Zariski wrote down a counter-example. When Grothendieck realized he was wrong, Zariski said (in his heavily accented Russo-Italian English) "In my time, I have had to learn many languages." At this, Grothendieck turned bright red from embarrassment.
Isaac Wright
At the Hebrew University, during a complex analysis course, the professor states and proves the famous "Liouville's theorem", that every entire bounded function is constant. One confused student, trying to get some general clarification, asks "maybe you can give an example?". The professor without hesitation answers "yes, Of course. 7" and continues... we all sat still trying not to laugh so that the confused student wan't be embarrassed, but he was still quite embarrassed though...
Dominic Kelly
Once, at a seminar, one of the world's best low-dimensional topologists was presenting a major result. At a certain point, another distinguished topologist in the audience intervened to say he did not understand how the speaker did a certain thing. The speaker gave an anguished look and gazed at the ceiling for at least a minute. The member of the audience then affirmed, "Oh yes, I hadn't thought of that!" Visibly relieved, the speaker went on with his talk, glad to have communicated this point to the audience.
Robert Green
Oh how I miss those types of teachers. 287
Aiden Bailey
Is this a meme? Sin (x) is bounded but not constant?
Owen Cox
Autism thread
Zachary Howard
an ENTIRE bounded function
Zachary Diaz
One time Henri Berestycki was riding the Paris subway on the way to work and doing some calculations. All of a sudden, an elderly lady sitting across from him said: "Why don't you multiply by alpha and integrate by parts?" This did not solve his problem, but it was a reasonable thing to do.
It turned out the old lady had once worked with Lebesgue. She remembered J.L. Lions as a "clever lad."
Ryder Sullivan
I've heard that in the earliest days of communist Hungary, Pal Turan was stopped on the street by a patrol. These patrols were charged with collecting a quota of people to be shipped off to Siberia (Stalin was still in charge, and arbitrary punishment is a big part of inducing the Stockholm Syndrome). While being searched and interrogated for his "crimes", the policeman was surprised and impressed (and perhaps a bit intimidated himself) to find a reprint of a paper of Turan's published pre-war in a Soviet journal. Turan was allowed to go free. That day, he wrote a letter to Erdos beginning, "I have discovered a most wonderful new application of number theory..."
Alexander Jones
He should have committed sudoku
Gavin Carter
sin(z) is not bounded, your domain choices matter brosaheim.
Henry Lewis
>I've heard source: Someone's ass
Alexander Bailey
You couldn't be more of a faggot if you tried; you chose the one anecdote in the thread that is most definitely true, from Turan himself:
"In September 1940 I was called in for the first time to labor-camp service. We were taken to Transylvania to work at railway building. Our main work was carrying railway ties. It was not very difficult work but a spectator could of course easily recognize that most of us-I was no exception-did it rather awkwardly. One of my more expert comrades said this at one occasion quite explicitly, even mentioning my name. An officer was standing nearby, watching our work. When hearing my name, he asked the comrade whether or not I was a mathematician. t turned out that the officer-Joseph Winkler by name- was an engineer. In his youth he had placed at a mathematical competition; in civilian life he was a proofreader at the printing shop where the periodical of the Third Class of the Academy (Mathematical and Natural Sciences) was printed and had seen some of my manuscripts. He could do no more than assign me to a wood-yard where big logs, necessary to railroad building, were stored, classified according to their diameter; my task was merely to show incoming groups the place where they could find those logs with the prescribed width."
While there is no mention of the purported letter to Erdos, he does say that in the following few days, while assigned to the wood-yard, he proved Turán's theorem.
Lincoln Martin
My first thought
Anthony Sanchez
welcome to the complex PLANE, stay as long as you like
Ryder Bell
Ah thanks. I don't even remember sine : C to C
Nathan Ward
Hardy goes to visit Ramanujan in the hospital and mentions the number of his taxi was 14. "I'm afraid that riding in a cab with such a dull number is an ill omen," Hardy says. And Ramanujan replies, "No, not at all; 14 is a very interesting number. It is the only one which can be written as the product of 7 and 2 in two different ways."
Jordan Watson
kek
Gavin Stewart
What was the paper? What was the lemma?
Blake Gomez
This thread inspired me to purchase Krantz' "Mathematical Apocrypha".
David Carter
...
Chase Richardson
I saw Shinichi Mochizuki at a grocery store in Los Angeles yesterday. I told him how cool it was to meet him in person, but I didn’t want to be a douche and bother him and ask him for photos or anything.
He said, “Oh, like you’re doing now?”
I was taken aback, and all I could say was “Huh?” but he kept cutting me off and going “huh? huh? huh?” and closing his hand shut in front of my face. I walked away and continued with my shopping, and I heard him chuckle as I walked off. When I came to pay for my stuff up front I saw him trying to walk out the doors with like fifteen Milky Ways in his hands without paying.
The girl at the counter was very nice about it and professional, and was like “Sir, you need to pay for those first.” At first he kept pretending to be tired and not hear her, but eventually turned back around and brought them to the counter.
When she took one of the bars and started scanning it multiple times, he stopped her and told her to scan them each individually “to prevent any electrical infetterence,” and then turned around and winked at me. I don’t even think that’s a word. After she scanned each bar and put them in a bag and started to say the price, he kept interrupting her by yawning really loudly.
Nathan Evans
Stale pasta. Fuck off.
I thought sci would be somewhat immune to the idiocy of the rest of 4 chan....thanks for proving me wrong cringe Lord.
William Anderson
This happened in 2010.
Two algebraic geometers were in an airport talking about blowing up points on a plane. They don't notice other travelers slowly backing away.
It took only one minute for the TSA officers to descend on the two mathematicians and take them away. They were thoroughly searched, and separated for interrogation. The interrogation got nowhere: the mathematicians had no idea what the interrogators were talking about. What bombs?
They finally realized the problem, and one pulled out a preprint of his paper and proceeded to explain to the interrogators exactly what "blowing up points on a plane" means in algebraic geometry.
Hunter Bailey
go on
Luke Anderson
That's it; they let them go.
Michael Jenkins
A certain well-known Russian mathematician, upon his arrival at Harvard University, was scheduled to teach Math 1a (the first semester of freshman calculus). He asked his fellow faculty members what he was supposed to teach in this course, and they told him: limits, continuity, differentiability, and a little bit of indefinite integration.
The next day he came back and asked, "What am I supposed to cover in the second lecture?"
Austin Parker
Go on
Colton Fisher
Mhm, and then what?
Ryder Ward
The ending is really lacking. Unless there's more, in which case, go on.
Colton Hughes
>sci >immune to Veeky Forums idiocy In what world? There is only one board which actually (almost) consistently maintains a somewhat high quality of discussions that I know of, and it sure as hell isn't Veeky Forums. No, I won't tell its name.
Cameron Gray
Wow, you did it! Liouville's theorem was wrong all along. Thanks user.
Jack Long
They were soon released after interrogators realised their mistake. As they were walking to the plane one mathematician turned to the other and said "Nice improvising brother, how did you come up with that shit?" "Mighty Allah gave me strength to deceive the infidels", other replied. "And they didn't even check our rectal cavities!"
Nicholas Stewart
/pol/?
Robert Lee
/s4s/
Justin Russell
Are you serious? /pol/ is where I spend ~80% of my internet-time. I can report with confidence that it's utter garbage.
Julian Williams
How do you stand it anymore? It's unusable nowadays. Too fast, too many memes.
Luis Johnson
Sheer habit. If somebody put in front of me a chan-format alternative to discuss economic and political matters that was humour-oriented without being necessarily meme-oriented I'd give it a shot but it hasn't come up. Maybe it's time I gave cripplechan another shot.
Matthew Jones
Lol
Luis Carter
its /diy/
Asher Rodriguez
i don't get it
Adrian Rivera
It's a parody of the following famous anecdote about Ramanujan:
Hardy once remarked, "I remember once going to see [Ramanujan] when he was ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi cab number 1729 and remarked that the number seemed to me rather a dull one and that I hoped it was not an unfavorable omen. 'No,' he replied, 'it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways.'"
Charles Evans
>scientific paper >'exercise for the reader' yep
Dominic Fisher
>Yale
Jeremiah Garcia
it happens though
Luis Morgan
>humblebrag
Ryan Young
Me ? I did not write this if that was the implication
Brandon Adams
yeah it just feels like humblebrag when writers write that
why not just write "proof omitted" or something
Connor Jackson
In mathematics, you can't publish anything without the rigor of showing it is true. But, you can comment that some proofs are "trivial" and move forward. "Exercise left to the reader" means you can take it on faith that the proof is there, or you can do it yourself. But you can't omit the proof entirely, or else it defeats the point of publishing the paper
Evan Thompson
sin(15 i) = sinh(15) i > 1000000 i
Carson White
You mean [s4s]? Only rude low quality posts are posted on /s4s/, you should be using the superior interface [s4s]
Charles Smith
I don't get it.
Aaron Turner
Trips of Satan. To be honest, my first ever calculus class at university was given by a physics teacher who was subbing for the the calc. teacher who couldn't come that day. The substitute professor covered all of that in that class.
Easton White
I do not get it either I suspect something like it took hours of meditation and medication and drug abuse and the answer came in one particularly trippy trip
yeah I have no idea
Charles Rivera
your post's margins are too small to write its name?
