Timeline for answer to Mathematical "urban legends" by Igor Rivin
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
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9 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 27, 2011 at 16:29 | comment | added | Thierry Zell | In view of Neil Strickland's story (and a couple of narrowly-averted disasters of my own), young mathematicians are urged to be cautious when fielding questions of strangers... I might add that sometimes, your audience background ends up being very different from what you expected; it's seldom good news. | |
| Jan 25, 2011 at 8:33 | comment | added | Neil Strickland | I once gave a seminar, and in response to a question from an unknown audience member, launched into an exposition of Baas-Sullivan theory. The organiser gently interrupted me: "I don't think you've met Nils Baas ..." | |
| Jan 25, 2011 at 6:58 | comment | added | Franz Lemmermeyer | In my first year I asked my professor in linear algebra, Schoenhage, whether he knew how to compute with large numbers (I was trying to write a program for testing the primality of Fibonacci numbers). | |
| Jan 25, 2011 at 3:35 | comment | added | Peter Woit | This story clearly comes in many variants. In my favorite, the Langlands retort to "do you mind if I ask you a stupid question" is "That's two already." | |
| Jan 25, 2011 at 2:21 | comment | added | fedja | The beauty of this story is that when you tell it to people, they all laugh but if you go one step further, they disagree on which of the two questions was stupid... | |
| Jan 24, 2011 at 22:37 | comment | added | José Figueroa-O'Farrill | The version in Milne's apocrypha (jmilne.org/math/apocrypha.html) is slightly different: $$ $$ A newly arrived member of the Institute for Advanced Study went up to two senior looking people and asked if either of them knew anything about representation theory. Being Borel and Langlands, they answered "yes". "Well," said the member, "do you mind if I ask you a stupid question?" "You already have" responded Langlands. | |
| Jan 24, 2011 at 22:34 | comment | added | Theo Buehler | This story also appears in André Weil's Souvenirs d'apprentissage. I was certain he attributed the rebuttal to himself, but I may be wrong. If I remember correctly it went "Puis-je vous poser une question stupide?" - "Vous venez de le faire". | |
| Jan 24, 2011 at 22:23 | comment | added | Ramsey | I've heard this same story with "automorphic forms" replaced by "algebraic groups" and "tea room" replaced by "grounds". The effects of the telephone game have caught one (or both) of us! (Judging from my source of the story, I'm guessing it's me...) | |
| Jan 24, 2011 at 22:16 | history | answered | Igor Rivin | CC BY-SA 2.5 |