
Lessons I wish I had been Taught - wickedchicken
http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~cahn/life/gian-carlo-rota-10-lessons.html
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simon
Some excellent points even for a non-maths guy like me. And I learned a new
word: incunabulum.

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mturmon
Rota's reflections, anecdotes, and musings are always a good read. I enjoyed
his book of essays (with Jacob Schwartz and Mark Kac) "Discrete Thoughts"

[http://books.google.com/books?id=5waLQ06J9VwC&pg=PA1&...](http://books.google.com/books?id=5waLQ06J9VwC&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=rota+discrete+thoughts&source=bl&ots=4ciczbh_cT&sig=Q_xO4eleD1-SGHTRLVXNBUICAgo&hl=en&ei=HqG8TpP-
FITbiAKqgIWBAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false)

and I see he has another called "Indiscrete Thoughts".

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thefool
Point 5 reminds me of this:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differentiation_under_the_integ...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differentiation_under_the_integral_sign#Popular_culture)

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jpdoctor
He was a fine professor, and these notes captured his attitude in the lecture
hall pretty well.

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zitterbewegung
Uh, isn't citing papers that have nothing to do with your paper unethical or
plagiarism and could be seen as padding your paper? I don't think citing
sources that have nothing to do with your paper is a good idea...

~~~
JoachimSchipper
Not really. Plagiarism means something else, and padding your paper or citing
some random guy doesn't help you in any way. (A lot of work is done to
_shorten_ papers to get them under journals' page limit, and many have at
least a full page of citations.) And he only did it once; if nothing else, he
can plausibly say "I had these papers on my desk, had a deadline, and wanted
to make sure I wasn't accidentally using their work without giving credit".

[I'm doing a PhD in crypto after my MSc in math, my girlfriend is doing her
PhD in math, lots of friends are mathematicians.]

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dilanj
Loved this:

Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius.
You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your
mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you
hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve
problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit,
and people will say: "How did he do it? He must be a genius!"

~~~
itaborai83
In Brazil there is a saying, "água mole em pedra dura, tanto bate até que
fura", which means something like "Soft water on hard rock will eventually
poke holes in it", but it sounds way less folksy than the original.

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aristidb
Unusually, the German version is much more concise:

Stetes Wasser höhlt den Stein.

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bh42222
My apologies, but I can't resist playing with national stereotypes:

German vs. Brazilian (Portuguese)

I think the best English approximation of the German version is: Steady water
drills the stone.

First we see that the German at once describes and commands the actions:
"drills". There is no time measure here, the point is the damn rock's getting
drilled and that's that.

In Brazilian/Portuguese the talk is of eventually. As in, sure it's inevitable
but the stone and the water will have a lot of time together, they will change
over time.

Next we can observe that while Portuguese/Brazilian provides details, like
many holes, the German is light on flowery detail, one hole, many holes, not
relevant to the pain point, which is: rock->drilled rock.

Lastly we can see the German implies the stone is hard, hard is the default
nature of all things in Germany, especially stones.

The Portuguese/Brazilian on the other hand specifically qualifies the stone as
hard, presumably because Brazil is filled with soft stones, gently dancing
under the feet of girls in Ipanema.

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aristidb
Made me smile... or would have, if I wasn't a German Very Serious Person. ;)

I don't think "drill" is such a good translation though. Höhlen comes from
"Höhle", meaning "cave". Maybe a better translation:

Steady water hollows the stone.

And you got to admit that the "German assumption of hardness" is actually
pretty accurate when it comes to stones! (Except those in Brazil, presumably.)

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keypusher
Lesson #1: Which words in a sentence need to be capitalized.

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PaulHoule
I figured out most of these aspects of the academic game before I bomed out of
it.

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hugh3
I am unfamiliar with the verb "to bome".

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ryanbraganza
<http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bome> "Verb, " I just Bomed
that math test!" (Meaning you did a good job)"

Although based on context, I'd guess a misspelt "bombed"?

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MostAwesomeDude
I think "bowed" is far more likely.

