Re: The Primacy of Primeness!
Posted by Victoria Hughes on Dec 13, 2011; 4:38am
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/The-Primacy-of-Primeness-tp7084950p7088774.html
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URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/The-Primacy-of-Primeness-tp7084950p7088774.html
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On Dec 12, 2011, at 8:47 AM, [hidden email] wrote:
Greetings, all --
Pamela's comments about pure and applied mathematics reminded me of this classic XKCD strip:
http://xkcd.com/435/
Happy Hols,
- Claiborne -
-----Original Message-----============================================================
From: Pamela McCorduck <[hidden email]>
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Sent: Mon, Dec 12, 2011 9:31 am
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Primacy of Primeness!
Ah, Peter, lovely story. By chance, we visited Bletchley Park on the day that the Brits returned--with great ceremony--an Enigma machine to the Poles, the people who'd first supplied the Brits with one. (We ourselves have two.)
However, my sense is that pure mathematicians look down a tad on applied mathematicians. Okay if something you discovered/invented a hundred years ago turns out to have a practical use today, but to actually invent/discover math with the hope of finding an application for it, or with the hope of having it describe some phenomena--useful, sure; but, you know, intellectually tacky.
P.
On Dec 11, 2011, at 11:24 PM, [hidden email] wrote:============================================================Prime Theory -- not to be Mocked, or Knocked! My tutor in grad school math at Cambridge was one Shaun Wylie, dead now; a famoso number expert. He was a supervisor at Bletchley where a chappie called Turing worked for him. They broke ENIGMA, that may have won the war -- certainly shortened it by a year or so. Interestingly, the Krauts were so convinced of their profs' bloody brilliance that for years they refused to believe that some bloody non-Aryan Limeys coulda broken it. Thus giving us lotsa running room!
Being a young ignorant prick (now, regrettably, an Old IP), I made stupid jokes like that the number one to the nth power had n divisors. With his modest integrity, he quietly filled me in on some of the practical uses of prime theory for code breaking. And he NEVER just talked about math -- he DID things with it!!
There is indeed " more in heaven and earth, Horatio, than thy philosophy dreams of".Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures
Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what to look for.
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
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