
A Math Genius Blooms Late and Conquers His Field - bokglobule
https://www.wired.com/story/a-math-genius-blooms-late-and-conquers-his-field/
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trentmb
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14646280](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14646280)

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KKKKkkkk1
Does getting an undergrad degree in astronomy and physics, and then a math PhD
from UIUC, really count as "blooms late"? Sounds like a fairly standard career
path to me.

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ianai
Yes, calling him a late bloomer when he's 34 is pretty awful.

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vnchr
There's a traditional view in math that most great accomplishments are had
before 30, based on past mathematicians' successes.

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ianai
"and the truly great ones are dead before they're 40 so all old mathematicians
must be worthless" I've heard that one, too. Doesn't make it beneficial to the
field.

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vnchr
Agreed. Great to have a counterpoint in the subject of this article.

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bmh100
I would just like to express my gratitude to [Kevin
Hartnett]([https://www.wired.com/author/kevin-
hartnett/](https://www.wired.com/author/kevin-hartnett/)) for making an
enjoyable article that I could almost follow as a quantitatively minded
programmer / non-mathematician. It makes sense saying that graphs are somehow
a form of matroid. Even without knowing what a matroid is, I get a sense of
the importance of spatial relationships.

~~~
__mbm__
Kevin wrote a blog post on this topic here:
[https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-tricky-translation-of-
mat...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-tricky-translation-of-mathematical-
ideas-20170628/)

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davidcamel
I majored in math in undergrad, and I always daydreamed about solving
difficult mathematical problems despite a lack of formal training. I even had
a teacher that I had to "pretend to understand".

Seeing a real-world example of this fantasy come true is fascinating. The
article was also surprisingly well-written; most mention of higher mathematics
in the media is oversimplified to death, but this was an honest and yet
approachable presentation of the Rota conjecture (now theorem).

By the way, here's another result on chromatic polynomials (proved first by I
don't know, but re-discovered by my combinatorics class):

Define a "gluing" operation by taking two graphs and connecting them along a
common vertex.

The chromatic polynomial, h(x), of the new graph, is the product of the
chromatic polynomials of the subgraphs over x: h(x) = f(x)*g(x) / x.

~~~
vlasev
For more such properties, check out this paper [1], section 1.5.

[1]:
[https://www.cs.elte.hu/blobs/diplomamunkak/mat/2009/hubai_ta...](https://www.cs.elte.hu/blobs/diplomamunkak/mat/2009/hubai_tamas.pdf)

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codepie
As another user pointed out, why should be the chromatic polynomial of
rectangle with deleted edge be: q^4 - 3q^3 + 2q^2 and not q * (q - 1)^3. A
counter example: when q=2, we have two ways to color the rectangle with a
deleted edge. Am I missing something?

I think fixating q as the number of possible ways to color the end points of
the deleted edge leads to the wrong result.

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omaranto
This article was "reprinted" from the original at Quanta Magazine. The
original article has the correct answer of q(q-1)^3. (It was probably
corrected after Wired "reprinted" it.)

[https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-path-less-taken-to-the-
peak...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-path-less-taken-to-the-peak-of-the-
math-world-20170627/)

~~~
_asummers
Indeed. At the bottom:

> Correction June 27, 2017: The original version of this article included an
> error in the calculation of the chromatic polynomial of a rectangle.

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failrate
It is always worthwhile to introduce the techniques from one field of study
into another.

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vinhboy
> his father taught statistics and his mother became one of the first
> professors of Russian literature in South Korea

I notice that really talented people, always have talented parents. Rarely do
I read stories about poor blue collar parents producing science wiz. It leads
me to believe that genetics play a much bigger role in our intelligence than
nurture.

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bradjohnson
Why does it lead you to believe that? If they have talented parents, wouldn't
the parents raise them in a way to encourage their talents to blossom?

Would be interesting to see if the children of talented parents that are put
up for adoption and raised by average parents are as successful. Or vice
versa, talented parents raising children of average parents.

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vinhboy
I guess you're right. I am obviously not that smart... Haha..

But to your point, Steve Jobs is an example of that. He had blue collar
adoptive parents, but his birth parents were PhD level people.

I am not gonna put my foot in my mouth again and say this is proof of
anything, but it is interesting to me.

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jacquesm
It's the nature vs nurture thing. It mostly boils down to 'a bit of both' and
if you are really lucky in either department then you can still very well
manage to succeed.

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bradjohnson
Just be born rich or well connected and you will have no need for silly things
like talent!

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vlasev
> "Every one of these graphs has a unique chromatic polynomial"

This is incorrect. Two different graphs may have the same chromatic
polynomial. For example, all trees of N vertices have the same chromatic
polynomial: x(x-1)^(N-1)

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soVeryTired
I think they're trying to say that the graph uniquely determines the
polynomial, rather than that the polynomial determines the graph. Or at least,
that's how I read it. But I agree it's a bit ambiguous.

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samfisher83
UIUC is a really good school. Getting in there is not easy.

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BeetleB
>UIUC is a really good school. Getting in there is not easy.

While overall a good school, their math department is not ranked that high.

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_asummers
Especially compared to engineering and CS.

