Mama Tried
Posted on 11/27/2007 7:00:02 PM PST by snarks_when_bored
I memorized it about 55 years ago, I think. Funny how those things stick with you, because I certainly haven’t thought about it much since.
I got almost all the way through the article before I realized the number after the name was the year of graduation, not the person's age. Guess I would've flunked Math 55.
16-Year-Old Wiz Kid Solves Dirichlet ProblemMichael Viscardi, of the Josan Academy for the Gifted in San Diego, won the Siemens Westinghouse Competition for his solution to the Dirichlet Problem. The problem involves solving a partial differential equation within a region, given boundary conditions. Viscardi said his work can be used for engineering applications, such as heat flow.
"This solution was not known before," said Peter Ebenfelt, Viscardi's adviser and a math professor at the University of California San Diego. "The Dirichlet problem is a very old problem; it's been around since it was formulated by Dirichlet in the 19th century." Advertisement
"Michael Viscardi is only 16 years old, yet he has produced work that is at or near the Ph.D. level," said Siemens Westinghouse judge Steven Krantz via e-mail. "[His results] are in a subject area that I have been studying for more than 30 years, and yet he saw further than I have seen."
Viscardi says he hopes to continue studying mathematics in college.
"I want to study math; I want to be a pure mathematician," he said. "Also, I want to be as much of a musician as I can."
Viscardi has applied to Harvard, hoping to take Math 55, the notoriously difficult introductory course, and to enter a joint program with the New England Conservatory where he will study either piano or violin. He will find out whether he has been accepted next week.
great post. Thanks.
(laugh)
Prove the following:
Sum[Cos[x*n]/n] converges uniformly, where n=1,...,Infinity.
Gosh, I was ticked, because there's conventional test e.g., "p-series", integral test, that will allow you to to get at the answer.
Any clever one know what this series converges to? You have two hours...tick,tick,tick, time is running. :-)
As class attendance steadily thins, the workload does not. The first few problem sets each take about 40 hours to complete. The work burden is reason enough for many extraordinarily gifted students to drop.
Case in point: Ameya A. Velingker ’10 took Advanced Placement calculus his freshman year and ranked in the top 12 for the USA Math Olympiad the year after that. “It was a tough decision to drop,” Velingker says. “You’re around all these people who are beasts at math. But I realized it was not going to work out.”
You have to love this stuff and have no life outside of it. These folks are out of my league.
Gee, can Viscardi’s parents please share with us exactly how they brought him up so he would be a math genius? It’s all environment, right? /sar
Pardon my French, but...
Merde sacré!
Halmos?
"Brains Make Gains, But Testes Are Bestes"
Big-balled bats have higher reproductive success than their big-brained counterparts. A study published in UK biology journal Proceedings B showed that bat species with promiscuous females have smaller brains than species with females who are faithful to their mates.
Two comments:
Of course bats with big balls do better.
Haven't these folks heard of "I'd hit it?"
And as for promiscuous females and smaller brains, just look at Paris Hilton.
Ba-dum bum!
Thread Hijack completed.
Your move.
You have to love this stuff and have no life outside of it.
That's more often true than not. But then there's Euler:
Euler was the most prolific mathematical writer of all times finding time (even with his 13 children) to publish over 800 papers in his lifetime.
Euler was able to do original mathematics while bouncing a baby on his knee...
I can do this stuff, but only at a snail's pace.
Hope I'll have time in heaven, unless there is aught even more compelling up there; in which case I respectfully yield the balance of my time.
Cheers!
(How have you been, man? Haven't seen you around for quite a while...)
The closest thing that we had like this at West Point was the math program that I was in— MA153-154. We did the core 4 semester math requirement in 2 semesterws.
(”Laughing here, boss.”)
I wonder if Blue Rudin is still being used...
As Gauss also demonstrated.;-)
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