
Terence Tao: the Mozart of maths - yitchelle
http://www.smh.com.au/good-weekend/terence-tao-the-mozart-of-maths-20150306-13fwcv.html
======
susi22
FYI:

The publication [1] that improved on the MRI results was the famous paper that
layed out the foundation of the what is called "Compressed sampling" /
"Compressive sensing". This is the main field of research for Signal
Processing folks since around 2006. (Before it was mostly "just" Wavelets for
a few decades).

In MRI you sample in the frequency domain (FFT) and compressive sensing can be
used since MRI signals (which are structured signals) are sparse in that
domain.

[1] Stable signal recovery from incomplete and inaccurate measurements

~~~
nl
[1]
[http://statweb.stanford.edu/~candes/papers/StableRecovery.pd...](http://statweb.stanford.edu/~candes/papers/StableRecovery.pdf)

------
byoung2
I didn't realize professors could make so much money:

[http://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases/state-
pay/#req...](http://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases/state-
pay/#req=employment%2Flist%2Fsafename%3Dterence%2520chishen%2520tao%2Fdepartment%3DUC%2520Los%2520Angeles)

~~~
kutkloon7
There is a general consensus that Terrence Tao is on a whole other level than
any other mathematician alive. Compared to the average salary of baseball,
basketball, football and soccer players, his salary is pathetically low.

~~~
joe_the_user
Oh, it may be that those math professors considered the best will have their
salaries approach those of sport stars while median pay for those who teach
classes continues to drop.

This seems like part of the general trend to value the "rock stars" of every
field while diminishing the field in general. Could mathematics get by with
just the fifty or however many people there are now who are "truly on the next
level" (or whatever is said). Perhaps when colleges have replaced with moocs
(an appropriate name if you know rpgs).

~~~
w1ntermute
> This seems like part of the general trend to value the "rock stars" of every
> field while diminishing the field in general.

This is precisely the topic of Tyler Cowen's _Average is Over_ [0]:

> Cowen forecasts that modern economies are delaminating into two groups: a
> small minority of highly educated and capable of working collaboratively
> with automated systems will become a wealthy aristocracy; the vast majority
> will earn little or nothing, surviving on low-priced goods created by the
> first group, living in shantytowns working with highly automated production
> systems.

Cowen's blog, _Marginal Revolution_ [1], is also worth a read.

0:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_is_Over](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_is_Over)

1: [http://marginalrevolution.com/](http://marginalrevolution.com/)

------
wolfgke
Terence Tao is a great mathematician - accepted. But I wish journalists would
use a fraction of the space they use for hyping Terence Tao to write about the
mathematics he does.

~~~
curiouslurker
It would be inaccessible to most. But the stories about the man can be enjoyed
by everyone.

~~~
wolfgke
Then the writer should give explanations to make it more accessible.

~~~
Moshe_Silnorin
I suggest you give that a try. You will find it nearly impossible, stretching
analogies into meaninglessness and then stacking them atop each other.

~~~
wolfgke
In some sense I did (not Fields-medal level, but graduate math level) some
years ago. The problem is not that it is impossible or that one needs
stretched analogies etc., but that the mass is simply doesn't like learning
about concepts that are foreign to them etc.

Or to explain it in different terms: When one asks me, what I'm doing as a
mathematician (in research): When the other person works in a related area I
can give a short, concise explanation that they will understand. On the other
hand, if the counterpart hasn't that deep knowledge, I have to give longer
explanations that are understandable for their level of knowledge. But this is
not what they want to hear (and I have not yet found out, what they want to
hear). For me it's quite illogical to ask what I'm doing research about, if
they don't even want to hear the answer...

------
thegreatshasha
It's interesting to read up about what terry himself has to say on the
subject. [https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one-
have-t...](https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one-have-to-be-a-
genius-to-do-maths/)

The comments section is particularly interesting in which a reader asks Terry
about the genius of Ramanujan.

~~~
yodsanklai
"Does one have to be a genius to do maths?"

The question is vague. What is a genius? and what is "doing maths"? Are we
talking about solving a simple linear differential equation, or getting a
professor position in a reputable institution? or getting a field medal?

In any case, it seems to me that Tao is giving the politically correct answer,
that is everybody can do anything provided they work hard enough. I wonder if
he honestly believes what he's saying.

It may be pleasant to hear, but I'm convinced it's far from the truth. Some
people are naturally much much more math inclined than others and no amount of
extra work is going to make up for the difference in talent.

------
lchengify
Related conversation about his PhD General Exam at Princeton, which I believe
he took when he was 19:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2771031](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2771031)

A direct link to the notes:

[http://web.math.princeton.edu/generals/tao_terence](http://web.math.princeton.edu/generals/tao_terence)

------
alexchantavy
In the 5 minute interview video, he mentions that the most exciting uses for
math are learned in college and that grade school math is very dry because the
students don't see what it can be used for. However, the article says that his
focus is on pure math, which doesn't necessarily lend itself immediately to
real world application.

I'm wondering what his opinion is on how to encourage a love for studying
abstract/pure math in spite of not seeing how it can be applied immediately.

------
littletimmy
Reading about guys as smart as Terence Tao makes me realize just how
intellectually mediocre I am.

~~~
NhanH
On a similar note, how should one feel when reading/ learning about people
like this?

I mean, on one hand, it's rather inspiring to read about the amazing thing
that another human is achieving. On the other hand, I can't help but feel ...
helplessness, like whatever I do, it doesn't really matter (add on with the
guilt of squandering my time, and wondering if I could ever have been that
good).

When I was younger and have less (or no) ambitions, it was easy to brush off
everytime a story like this comes up: well, they're genius, and ... so what?
But interestingly, since I've learned that I might be able to do more than I
thought I could, everytime I read a story like this, I just feel extremely
mediocre, even pathetic of myself.

~~~
heurist
I've been dealing with this kind of existential anxiety myself lately. Nothing
anyone does matters on a universal scale, and I realized that was only painful
because I had expectations for myself that were incongruent with reality. It's
okay to not be a genius or contribute something significant, you only need to
look for happiness and stability, which could be fading into obscurity and
enjoying your time with friends and family. Personally, the times when I feel
most relaxed are the times when I am most creative and do some of my best work
anyway.

------
CurtMonash
My experience was similar to his in one respect, specifically the quote that
suggests he first had a fairly normal life when he went to grad school at age
17. I left home for the first time to go to college at age 16, specifically
graduate school in mathematics at Harvard. In retrospect, it seems to have
been a fairly normal experience in leaving home and going to college.

It helped me that I was friends with Ran Donagi (started in my department at
age 17, had the office next to mine, and accepted my invitation to be my
roommate), and that Ofer Gabber (started grad school at 16) was around in the
next dorm room to the right, being even more awkward than I was. (At least I
didn't have a language barrier ...)

------
kutkloon7
Interesting article. The information quoted in the last paragraph contains an
error. It seems that Adam Spencer confused a primality test for a
factorization algorithm. There IS an efficient test for primality, the AKS-
test, see
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AKS_primality_test](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AKS_primality_test)
and
[http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/manindra/algebra/primality_v...](http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/manindra/algebra/primality_v6.pdf)

~~~
bo1024
And that's a pretty cool-mindblowing idea -- we can "efficiently" prove that a
number is composite, while still having no idea what its factors are!

~~~
zeroonetwothree
It's common in math to get theorems that prove existence without giving any
explicit examples (nonconstructive proofs). A big research area is coming up
with efficient ways to construct such examples.

~~~
bo1024
Definitely true, but these things are of a different "kind" (in my opinion).
Often such a proof implies, for instance, a really inefficient algorithm, such
as "try all the random possibilities and with positive probability such an
example exists. They also tend to have a flavor of a somewhat complicated
object whose existence you are proving, and they don't tend to be phrased as
algorithms (especially not efficient ones).

Here the primality test algorithm is an efficient algorithm, and doesn't seem
natural to view as an existence/nonexistence proof of an object, in the same
way. Instead it's exploiting the number-theoretic properties of primality in a
weird way. Hope that makes sense, but anyway just trying to explain my
intuition for why this is very different from the phenomenon you mentioned.

------
calibraxis
This top-rated story is kinda low even for "Hacker News". Written in the
ritual heroic allegory style. A puff-piece with supposed facts about some
dude's childhood and what people think about him, patronizing even his own
opinions as modesty-only-rivalled-by-his-genius.

I'd at least understand such articles about Sophie Germain or Alexander
Grothendieck, who achieved "genius" despite not being coddled quite so much by
every superficial social system arbitrarily impressed by early child-
development timelines. For example, Germain hacked the system as a child: _"
When night came, [her parents] would deny her warm clothes and a fire for her
bedroom to try to keep her from studying, but after they left she would take
out candles, wrap herself in quilts and do mathematics."_

Then, _" She used the name of a former student Monsieur Antoine-August Le
Blanc, 'fearing,' as she later explained to Gauss, 'the ridicule attached to a
female scientist.'"_

Social engineering? One thing hackers do.

As for Tao as a child wanting something in shape of arabic numerals, or as an
adult imagining himself as some mathematical transform? His wife giving up _"
paid employment to manage the household, shield Tao from mundane matters and
buy the polo shirts he wears"_? Seems less hackerish. If Tao has done anything
beyond what society shaped him to do, straying from the path he was given in
an intensely hierarchical society, I don't recall seeing it in this article.

~~~
bo1024
I thought it was an interesting/fine article. If you want to submit articles
about other people to HN, go for it (your anecdotes sound interesting). But
there's no reason that every interesting person has to fit some "hacker"
archetype you seem to have in mind.

------
Bahamut
This is a bit nitpicky, but I was annoyed with the shifting between using
"math" and "maths" in the article - it's annoying enough to see "maths" used,
having formerly been in the academic math world, but to waffle between the two
is just confusing.

~~~
jamesrcole
> _it 's annoying enough to see "maths" used_

it's the standard shorthand for "mathematics" that's used in Australia. We
don't use the term "math".

~~~
jacques_chester
More specifically: the prose written by the journalist uses "maths", because
that's the standard spelling in Australia.

Every example of "math" appears in a quote, so they are being reproduced
verbatim.

------
rdlecler1
I wonder if China has captured his DNA and made 50 or 100 clones.

