

From Pi to Puzzles: continued fraction of pi new record by a 13 years old - pixdamix
http://blog.wolfram.com/2011/09/15/from-pi-to-puzzles/

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DevX101
Here's a blog post from his mom talking about him from two years ago. At the
time he was corresponding with Bill Gosper (founder of the hacking community
according to Wikipedia)

[http://www.daftmusings.com/2009/05/14/neil-and-the-julia-
rob...](http://www.daftmusings.com/2009/05/14/neil-and-the-julia-robinson-
math-festival/)

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ColinWright
Neil is cool and fun. Like bumbledraven I met Neil at a conference early in
2010. He (Neil) is still clearly just pre-teen, but at the same time his
knowledge and abilities are awesome.

And he's nice too.

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keithpeter
I accept the article was a bit heavy on Mathematica references, but material
like this is really useful in teaching!

Mathematica does represent a considerable investment, and they are maintaining
wolframalpha for free use.

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suhastech
I'm 18 and I feel so old.

Awesome work, kid .... I mean.... Sir!

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0x12
It would be cool if Wolfram could write about this kid without trying to
subvert his accomplishments into an advertorial for mathematica.

It's bad enough that he passes his employees results off as his own (see
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Cook>), to try to take indirect credit
for this kids' achievements is disgusting.

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DerekL
Yeah, it's almost like blog.wolfram.com is just a promotional tool for Wolfram
Research. Actually, that's exactly what it is.

This blog is not pretending to be an unbiased information source on
mathematics or computer algebra software. If you want that, go elsewhere.

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fragsworth
Call me cynical but this reads more like a promotional piece for Mathematica
than it does praise for the kid.

It's bad enough that I think it calls into question the legitimacy of this
whole situation.

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cheez
You're cynical. In _Mathematica_.

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Jun8
Continued fractions are fascinating; however, I think they fell through the
curriculum cracks: deemed a bit advanced for high school and too elementary
for college level.

Neil appears to be extremely intelligent; however, I think this is also
testament that great intuitive tools lead to great achievements.

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archgoon
I think they get covered in number theory courses.

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bumbledraven
This kid is such a stud. I had the honor of meeting him at a conference a few
years ago when he was only 11 or 12. He answered questions about math like an
intelligent grad student, conveying his own ideas in fully grammatical
sentences without ums or ahs. It was as if he were reading from a textbook on
the subject that he had written. One of the presenters called him on stage and
tried to tease him a bit, but he was utterly un-phased by it, and gave
intelligent, straightforward replies.

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palish
Have you heard Knuth speak? He's full of "um's" and "ah's".

(Neil is fantastic; I only brought it up because I'm someone who uses a lot of
"um's" and "ah's", which tends to give people the impression that I'm dim. So
it gave me hope to find out that even the great Knuth suffers from it too.)

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mahcuz
Isn't Knuth 150 years old though?

