
What do Bill Gates and Richard Stallman have in common ? - pvdm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Math_55
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logicalmind
If anyone is interested, here are the textbooks for the course:

Math 55a

* Required: Axler, Linear Algebra Done Right, Springer, 1997.

* Required: Artin, Abstract Algebra, Prentice-Hall, 1991. * Recommended: Halmos, Naive Set Theory, Springer-Verlag, 1974.

* Also useful: Halmos, Finite-Dimensional Vector Spaces, Springer-Verlag, 1987.

* Also useful: Fulton and Harris, Representation Theory: A First Course, Springer-Verlag, 1991. See especially Appendix B.

* Also useful: Bott and Tu, Differential forms in Algebraic Topology, Springer-Verlag, 1982. See especially Chapter 1.

Math55b

* Required: Rudin, Principles of Mathematical Analysis, McGraw-Hill, 1976.

* Required: Marsden and Hoffman, Basic Complex Analysis, Freeman, 1999.

* Recommended: Stein and Shakarchi, Fourier Analysis, an Introduction, Princeton University Press, 2003.

* Also useful: Stein and Shakarchi, Complex Analysis , Princeton University Press, 2003.

* Also useful: Bott and Tu, Differential Forms in Algebraic Topology , Springer, 1982. See especially 1.1-1.3.

* Also useful: H. M. Schey, Div, Grad Curl and All That , Norton, 2005.

* Also useful: Hubbard and Hubbard, Vector Calculus, Linear Algebra and Differential Forms, Prentice Hall 1999.

* Also useful: T. Needham, Visual Complex Analysis , Oxford University Press, 1997.

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jgg
I feel vindicated in knowing that I either own or have already wishlisted a
lot of these. (:

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bravura
I remember friends who took Math 55 pulling ridiculously long hours. It either
makes you or breaks you as a potential mathematician.

One friend took up smoking, just so he would have an excuse to break.

Two friends ended up becoming philosophers, which is the mathematics of the
humanities.

At the end of the class, they printed a t-shirt with a tiny little diagram on
the breast, and "Math 55" on the back. The tiny little diagram? A Dynkin
Diagram (<http://mathworld.wolfram.com/DynkinDiagram.html>). As the story
goes, Prof. Pavel Etingof, before introducing Dynkin Diagrams, said: "If
aliens ever came to earth, and told us that we were primitive, I would say
'No, we are not primitive', and I would show them Dynkin Diagrams to prove
it."

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okmjuhb
Math 55 isn't nice because of how much math it covers (you could take
equivalent classes that cover the same material, just split up, at the same or
higher level). It's nice because of the bonds it forges between the students,
who are usually the top mathematical talent at Harvard. I'd suspect that it's
these bonds that help the students throughout the rest of their mathematics
education rather than their incoming ability or what the class teaches.

If you look at the problem sets, they're very hard (especially given that the
students are all freshmen - a few of whom haven't ever done advanced
mathematics before), but not unreasonably so (not really even beyond the top
math majors of most top schools, I'd wager). Having made friends in a trial by
fire like the 55 a/b series though, is a key to surviving later ones.

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jollojou
A year ago I took the course on calculus and group theory. I worked on the
course 15 to 20 hours per week for three months and received a good grade.

The course was worth the effort. It enhanced my engineer identity and brought
me self-respect. Now that I've passed the course, I'm much more confident
about my self; I feel that I can solve difficult problems if I want to. I know
that I can concentrate.

In short, putting your self through advanced mathematics is a great way to
improve your capability of facing and handling difficult issues.

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mkramlich
From the title I fully expected to find out they both had studied under the
same Shao-Lin Kung Fu Master. But many years ago, they had a falling out,
after their master was murdered and each blamed the other for it. One
dedicated himself to the pursuit of Evil. The other would walk the path of
Light. Legend says they will one day meet again, and a great fight will occur,
and only one will be left standing, and on that day, the world will finally
learn what truly happened to their master.

Or maybe this is just me.

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Goosey
"In the class of 1970, only 20 of the 75 students who began the class finished
it due to its difficulty."

Now I am curious if either BG or RS successfully COMPLETED the course (and
hell, while we are at how well they did!)

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jgg
From <http://oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch04.html> :

 _To ease the transition, Stallman fell back on his strengths: math and
science. Like most members of the Science Honors Program, Stallman breezed
through the qualifying exam for Math 55, the legendary "boot camp" class for
freshman mathematics "concentrators" at Harvard. Within the class, members of
the Science Honors Program formed a durable unit. "We were the math mafia,"
says Chess with a laugh. "Harvard was nothing, at least compared with the
SHP."

To earn the right to boast, however, Stallman, Chess, and the other SHP alumni
had to get through Math 55. Promising four years worth of math in two
semesters, the course favored only the truly devout. "It was an amazing
class," says David Harbater, a former "math mafia" member and now a professor
of mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania. "It's probably safe to say
there has never been a class for beginning college students that was that
intense and that advanced. The phrase I say to people just to get it across is
that, among other things, by the second semester we were discussing the
differential geometry of Banach manifolds. That's usually when their eyes bug
out, because most people don't start talking about Banach manifolds until
their second year of graduate school."

Starting with 75 students, the class quickly melted down to 20 by the end of
the second semester. Of that 20, says Harbater, "only 10 really knew what they
were doing." Of that 10, 8 would go on to become future mathematics
professors, 1 would go on to teach physics.

"The other one," emphasizes Harbater, "was Richard Stallman."_

No idea about Gates.

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donaq
That was a very interesting look into RMS' youth. Thanks for the link!

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JoeAltmaier
They are way over-discussed on technical blogs, hero worship or demonization
alike.

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j_baker
"Gates said the experience of taking a class "where everybody had an 800 on
their SAT and 5 on their AP"

I'm a bit perplexed by this statement. An 800 on the SAT (even before they
changed the scores) isn't a _huge_ achievement is it?

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pvdm
In the math portion, an 800 is a perfect score.

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leif
Even so, it's not a huge achievement.

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nvoorhies
It's 3 standard deviations above the mean, so it'd definitely be an eye-opener
compared to the composition of pretty much any high school class.

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leif
That mean includes everyone that isn't applying to the math department at
Harvard. What do you think the mean is among their applicants?

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pvdm
<http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1931503/posts>

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teoruiz
Shouldn't that read "What _do_ Bill Gates and Richard Stallman have in
common"?

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MaysonL
<pedantry> What _do_ Bill Gates and Richard Stallman have in common?
</pedantry>

~~~
pvdm
k

~~~
MaysonL
t

