Education

Oxford University is bending the rules for women

That universities have been bending the rules for women is well known. Just look at how the SAT has been changed to improve the results of women, or take into account that admissions procedures for many competitive degree programmes, such as medicine, give women a leg up in the interview to make up for their poorer results on standardised tests. Yes, men do better on the MCAT. The reason why women can’t compete with men at the top end of the ability spectrum is easy to see. It has to do with the fact that there are simply fewer women with very high IQs. Even your typical left-leaning scientist will grudgingly admit that when confronted with irrefutable evidence. They’ve tried refuting those studies, but couldn’t.

Now, let’s move from the abstract to the more concrete. It recently emerged that Oxford University has been deeply saddened by the comparatively poor performance of female students in mathematics and computer science. We learn that the number of male students who get a “First”, i.e. the top grade, in mathematics in 2017 was 45, while the corresponding number of female students was just 7. Absolute numbers are comparatively worthless, so I tried to dig up how many young men and women they enroll. I couldn’t find a more detailed breakdown, but the three-year average from 2014 to 2016 has around 400 males admitted to Mathematics, while the corresponding number for females is around 140. Drop-outs are quite rare in Oxford, but people do change their degrees. Anway, as a rough estimate, the number of women getting a first-class degree should be 100% higher to match their relative strength in the student body.

The solution for Oxford is to increase time limits for undergraduate exams from 90 minutes to 105 minutes. This seems to apply to both men and women, not just women, however. Feminists have criticized the changes “as ‘sexist’ as they believe it suggests that women are the weaker sex”. Well, they only do fare half as well as men, so that point should be proven by now. Oh, and in case it’s not obvious, there are essentially zero famous mathematicians. Yes, I know that Wikipedia lists a few dozen or so, but where is the female Gauss, Riemann, Cantor, Hilbert, Leibniz, Newton, or, for some more recent names, Perelman, or Tao? That’s right, they don’t exist.

The reasoning presented in the Daily Mail article for why women need more time is quite amusing:

While experts suggest there are no gender differences in mathematical ability, Sarah Hart, maths professor at Birkbeck, University of London, said she had noticed that female students double-checked their answers before suggesting them in class. Whereas male students were quicker to answer, but more likely to get them wrong.

If your “experts” claim there are no gender differences in mathematical ability, then they are simply wrong. That maths professor must also live in some kind of parallel universe, because in upper-level university classes at decent universities you don’t “double-check” your answers like in primary school. Instead, you work on your problem sets at home, and present your results in class.

Also, based on my experience taking proof-based maths courses, time isn’t really the issue. In exams you normally do simpler proofs than on problem sets, or maybe some variations you’ve studied, but with a twist. You either have the ability to solve it or not. If you run out of time, you’ll still get almost full marks with a correct sketch of the proof that leaves some steps unspecified. Yes, you can make a few mistakes and stil get an A or a First. What this change might lead to is help a few students who were close to getting a First and who may genuinely need the time, but that can’t be a lot of people. If you’ve mastered the material, you can lose a few points here and there and still get a First. Yet, if you have gaps, then a few extra minutes won’t be of much use as you can’t properly solve the problems anyway. As I happened to read in another article on that issue, there is already data of that experiment available, which seems to confirm this. The Telegraph reports:

However, despite the intention being to lessen gender discrepancies, the main effect of the time increase appears to have been an increase in the number of 2:1s overall, with 2:2 figures falling. Men continued to be awarded more first-class degrees than women in the two subjects.

Now we know that! It seems the only solution is to make exams easier, because we clearly need more Firsts. This is sarcasm, of course. Grade inflation does little good as it devalues the achievements of the truly stellar students. Yet, it may be the way forward. Well, there certainly is the perverse incentive of universities to devalue undergraduate degrees so that students have to go for at least a Master’s degree to distinguish themselves, before they realize that most of the other 30 to 40% of students in their cohort who got a First had the same idea. I wonder when the bubble will burst.


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48 thoughts on “Oxford University is bending the rules for women

  1. This is the quite the misogynistic, you actually have zero proof that women are worse in maths. A few observations here and there is not proof
    Correlation is not causation. I can think of many reasons less women score a first, none of them having to do with less ability. For example oppression by the patriarchy. Or maybe they rather pursue something else than getting a first. Its a free country after all…
    It just shows your bias you jump to a misogynistic conclusion automaticly. Hint: When given facts, you just try to fit the facts to your bias. Instead try fitting your bias to reality,which is the reverse.

      1. You appear to know a thing about mathematical proofs Aaron, you must realize you cant actually prove your interpretations of these observations with what you posted. In fact you sound like James Damore who made the same error.
        It doesnt pass the smell test, nor occams razor.

      2. Aaron: less women get a first proportionally. We can then try to identify a cause. You went straight into they cant. That is the first thing you can think of as common ssense as a regular person, but its often the wrong conclusion. An example where observation goes wrong is in the case of china. A communist country that appears to practice capitalism. So you could argue I see capitalism, therefore it is capitalist. But you would be missing what you dont observe on the surface level. The hidden stuff that proves to me China is communist, and causes outcompeting the biggest capitalist nation the USA. If youre interested ill tell you. Communism is thus beating capitalism in realtime hd.

      3. Now because of the lack of scientific research we wont actually know the cause of less women getting first, but what is it that we dont see on the surface. You made opinion on surface level only. We have male privilege, ask what do women do different? Indeed spend, hours everyday on their appearance. Spend more hours child nurturing. Maths is a career. Careers costs time. Less time for maths available equal lesser successfull math careers. And practice does matter. We know that from brain research that repetition infuces neuroplastivity.

        This is deeper level common sense.
        I hope you all learned something today.

      4. Jon, obviously all those highly privileged women studying maths at Oxford struggle to compete with men because they are raising Tyrone and Jamal’s kids in a council estate, right? As we advised you before, don’t go full retard.

    1. “you actually have zero proof that women are worse in maths”

      But rather a lot of evidence. In any case, this is a red herring. The question isn’t about general ability, it’s about the very tippy-top hundredth of a percent of people.

  2. Yea 1+1=oppression by the patriarchy. Now i see. Thx Jon.

    Oh and stop eating the cleaning tab’s. They are bad for your health.

      1. Ahhhh don’t be that way. Our little commi friend is a great source of entertainment. Keeps conversation a little light. Every village needs a fool. We do have some funny moments with him. Untill he go’s full retard again. #jonlivesmatter

      2. Neutral, you disappoint me. I thought we were bros. After all, blood is thicker than water. Aka blood of the brotherhood is thicker than water of the womb. We shared the same expierences so I thought we were closer than family.
        But now you say you wish me to die, wtf? How heartbreaking!

  3. If everyone is beautiful, no one is beautiful. The same applies to college: if everyone got a degree, no one got degree, because that “tag” has no value.

    My professor for drive technology said once “if something has no price, it’s nothing worth”. A good degree pushes you to your limits and beyond that. You only have to options: sink or swim.

    To make big money in some fields you don’t have to have a college degree. Take a look at Ragnar Thornquist, founder of Red Thread Games.
    Btw, what’s interesting is how companies nowadays validate a college degree: due to grades inflation they started their own “exams” on their website to see if you can perform. If you say you can write code, they wanna see if that’s true.

    1. You are right in principle. However, Ragnar Thornquist is an almost comically bad example for supporting your argument. Looking at his biography, you can easily see that he hails from a highly privileged background. This is straight from his Wikipedia page:

      Tørnquist studied art, history and English at St Clare’s, a school in Oxford from 1987 to 1989. From 1989 to 1990, he studied philosophy and English at the University of Oslo. After that, from 1990 to 1993 he attended the Undergraduate Film and Television department at the New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

      So, he dicked around in Oxford for fun, went back to Norway, and then attended, but presumably not graduated from, a very expensive school in NYC. Those people have money and connection. It’s similar to how occasionally guys go from Eton to high finance, skipping college altogether, or high-school kids intern at Goldman Sachs because their daddy is an MD. Those are most certainly not stories that support the general claim that you don’t need to get a degree.

    2. Don Draper: You’re right you don’t have to have a college degree to make money. You need opportunity and skill. You can have skills without a college degree. There are other places to learn skills. The problem is most won’t give you the opportunity to proof your skills without a college degree. But this is indeed changing. And personally i think it’s a good thing. I had a relationship with a highly educated woman that was plain stupid. And i had a relationship with a woman from a third world country with hardly any education. And she was smart as hell. Personally i prefer to hire a smart person without a degree. Than a stupid person with a degree. You dont have to be smart to get a college degree anymore. You just have to lay down the money. And remember some answers just long enough to past the test. And thats a problem when you are using degrees to see if someone is fit for the job. A degree doesn’t proof anything these days. (depending on your field)

      1. “Personally i prefer to hire a smart person without a degree.”

        Back when I was managing the office at another company, very small bussiness unit, so there was no HR department, I did the selection and preliminary interviews of the new applicants. I quickly learned to assign greater value to job experience in the field, however brief, than in academic credentials of any kind.

      2. Yarara: Some of the most productive employees i had. Came with zero education in our field and zero experience. They were young and eager to learn. It’s a matter of investment. I prefer someone with the right mindset and motivation. Someone that i can shape. Downside would be the time needed to train such a person. You have to be willing to make the investment. Someone with a degree or experience can possibly save time and money that’s needed to train them. On the other hand. It’s hard to fill a cup that’s already full. Some of these people are already stuck in their way of doing things. And many feel entitled to the job. While some people coming from the bottom will break their backs for you. If you give them the opportunity to advance in their career. Modern day college is known to create entitled snowflakes. That’s not exactly a positive. It’s a problem. It’s sometimes harder to make them drop the entitled mentality. Than to build someone from the bottom up. It really depends on the person in question.

      3. I am dealing with a similar problem currently. I don’t come across snowflakes in the millenial sense because I’m hiring heavy machinery operators and truckers. The turnover rate in this sector is pretty high, as demand rises and falls with construction projects, so some people come and go constantly.

        A lot of them havent even finished high school, which is no problem as long as they can read, but they come with bad habits from other companies (eg: they are lazy, negligent, dont do maintenance properly, steal, break stuff). I have been trying to push the idea that we must take on a couple guys with no experience, but willing to work, and train them from scratch, but to no avail. So every time a new project requires extra operators we are out hiring again and going through the whole process again.

        The best and most reliable employees we have, we keep on payroll on a constant basis even if there is not enough work for them, because it is bloody hard to find decent workers among this crowd.

      4. Yarara: The curse of middle management. You have to deal with the shit coming from top and bottom. I know exactly what you’re going through. They give you just enough responsibility so you can be blamed when the master plan from the top doesn’t work out. But just to little power to deal with the problems on the bottom effectively. Had to deal with shit like that for years. And when you get above that level of bullshit. There’s a nice snakepit waiting for you in higher office. So don’t get your hopes up to much when climbing the ladder. (so glad i’m not working a corp job anymore)

      5. “(so glad i’m not working a corp job anymore)”

        Ben, can you share what you’re into at the moment?

      6. Neutralrandomthoughts: There’s a new type of battery coming in a few years. If you’re interested in long-term investment. I advice you to look into it.

      7. “And when you get above that level of bullshit. There’s a nice snakepit waiting for you in higher office. So don’t get your hopes up to much when climbing the ladder. (so glad i’m not working a corp job anymore)”

        Right now I am working in a small company, not a corporation, so there really is not more room to climb up, so the only possible way to grow is if the company expands, which it is doing (almost doubled in size in the last 4 years or so).

      8. @ben
        thanks, but whatever it is I strongly doubt that the multiplicator on the initial investment will exceed the one I have had and will have on my investments in the digital asset space.
        But yes, batteries are a good investment. Big inefficiencies as of today, old systems, and a huge scope with regards to utility.
        My investments have the same characteristics, but are in the financial, data storage and document security space.
        Good luck to both of us!

      9. Neutral, use any profits to add to your core China index long position. Strong buy and hold recommendation. For a nice retirement in 40 years time. I imagine it to have to performance similar to the SnP from 1950-1990. China index should be a core position In anybodys portfolio and is a nobrainer. Its also an easy hold because of the low P/E, high profits and dividends. Its a bit slower than crypto, but we all need some boring deep value to offset our risky bets. Next Warren Buffett will have bought China stocks, thats for sure. buy any dips in these indexes. Ignore China doomers, theyve never been right. China has always surpassed expectations.

      10. Neutralrandomthoughts: I see. I’m more into hardware, natural resources and defence. Playing it save and long-term at the moment. But same, good luck to both of us!

      11. @Jon
        I have zero intention to play China in whatsoever way.
        I do not live there and so my thinking doesn’t happen in their currency. I’d have to invest in Chinese currency denominated assets though. Another solution would be to hedge it against my reference currency, which is the CHF. At current interest rates, the interest rate differential between CHF & CNY is well in the 5%, which is the hedging cost that forwards would have. In which case I might as well go into Swiss small caps, they will outperform Chinese returns minus the hedging costs.
        In any case, I’m in no way interested in publicly traded assets, as this does not create any value, it just props up prices by changing hands.

        Also, I give shit about any macro calls like the one you just made, because they take into consideration way too much factors at which point estimated guesses are not much better than a coin flip. Just compare your “long china”, with ben’s “long new type of battery”. One is a broad as can be (how many fucking positions are in the Chinese indexes anyway? 30? 50? 200? – In any case wayyyy too diversified. One can also over-diversify, you know) – the other is a targeted, sector specific investment, where we actually can make some quite good projections, because there are unshakeable trends, which do not depend on so many factors like “long China” does.

      12. You can play China through HongKong. That is what I would advise anyway. Also buying growth stocks is great and all, but remember the 3dprinting/nanotech hype? The tech still is useful, but where is the investors money? I dont know why you want to be fully allocated to growth, instead of having some in much safer value. Seems reckless.

      13. jon you need to read what I write other wise just don’t bother replying

        a) I never said I favour growth stocks, I’m interested in equity not publicly traded stocks. Big difference.
        b) your HK exposure is just as useful to me as a USD exposure, because HKD is like USD in terms of interest rate differential. A one year forward USDCHF costs 280-300 bps p.a. at the moment. And as long as the ECB continues buying any dog shit bonds they can get their fucking hands on and as long as the US economy is doing great on paper 1. Switzerland won’t raise its rates and 2. the US will continue raising rates which just makes the forwards more expensive. Just fyi, because you probably don’t know this: HKD is pretty much tied to USD.

        Now go back to buying your index funds. Remember, in finance, “diversification is the only free lunch”. Ever asked yourself why it’s free? Because the sell side makes money on it, not you.

      14. Yarara: Right now I am working in a small company, not a corporation, so there really is not more room to climb up, so the only possible way to grow is if the company expands, which it is doing (almost doubled in size in the last 4 years or so).

        There’s a good chance it will be bought by a big corp soon. If the growth is generated by profit.(not just investments) They are likely to take over some of the employment contracts. Should that happen. Jump on the happy new family PR train. They often promote some of the old employees to increase compliance with the old staf. Help them sell the new happy family PR to your colleges. Directly ask for a higher management job. (Happy happy this takeover is awesome, i can finally realise my ambitions) Work your ass off. When you have the promotion. Directly start looking for a new job in the same function and pay grade. (or higher) If you wait too long they will push you out the moment they removed all your old colleges. (1-2 years) takeover=stepping stone.

  4. Yarara: If you are serious about climbing the ladder. Be ruthless and without mercy. And don’t expect others to show any towards you. Eat or be eaten. Start reading The Art of War by Sun Tzu. Almost everyone in higher office is using these tactics. Be ready for some serious backstabbing. If that doesn’t sound like something you want to be involved with. Don’t even bother. Be happy with what you have. Or look for other ambitions. Middle management is like shovelling shit everyday. Higher management is warfare. It’s that simple.

    1. Yarara: Be extra careful with women in higher office. They are the backstabbing masters. It’s easer for them to appear weak while they are not. And the other men in the office are more likely to help them. Never fuck them. They will use sex as a backstabbing tool. They often fuck multiple men in the office. And they play them against each other like pawns. Women are specially rare in the field you’re working in. That only makes them more dangerous. They will have more allies amongst the men working in the office. I had some serious backstabbing done to me by females in the office. Most male colleges will happily sell you out for some pussy. And most females will happily claim your successes as their own. And pin their failures on you. And most men will help them do it. So keep records.

      1. Hey ben, thanks for the good advice, but thankfully they dont apply much to my current job. Let me explain

        The company I work for now is small and family owned. CEO/founder built it from scratch, and he would rather die than sell it. His kids are supposed to take over in the future, but that might be a decade away.

        Also we occupy a carefully carved out niche in our market, very conservative bussiness approach, which is not suitable for the larger construction corps. We are small but extremely flexible and efficient. And we have almost zero debt (at most, part of the vehicle fleet is on a lease, but thats all).

        Sometimes we get subcontracted by larger corps do participate in large public projects, but we try to avoid it and deal with private sector customers personally and offer them closely tailored solutions.

        Also, zero women here.

        That being said, I know what you are talking about. When I worked in low level management in an international corporation a few years back I got caught in an all-out war between different bussiness units. We prevailed, in the end, and managed to avoid our absorption by a larger unit.

        Ps: i have for long been aware of Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, and Clausewitz. 🙂

  5. “Yes, I know that Wikipedia lists a few dozen or so, but where is the female Gauss, Riemann, Cantor, Hilbert, Leibniz, Newton, or, for some more recent names, Perelman, or Tao? That’s right, they don’t exist.”

    Off the top of my head, I can think of Sofia Kowalevskaya, Emmy Noether (19th century, once again, a German by birth) and Nina Bari (mid-20th century, her book written on the doctrine of infinite series in 1939 is an excellent guidance to newcomers like me, very thorough. She was an expert in trigonometric series anyway). She was also an excellent student of Nikolai Luzin. Since I am currently very interested in the history of Mathematical Analysis, Madame Agnesi comes up in some of my reading. Of recent famous mathematicians, Maryam Mirzakhani (just passed away, sadly) and Maryna Viazovska.

    I notice female mathematicians are very well adored in the math circles, probably because there are so few of them, and because the majority of them have no girlfriends anyway.

    1. Regarding the current educational system, nothing can be said about its unfairness to women. The little minority gifted girls who wish to dedicate their lives to the research of mathematics and natural sciences are strongly encouraged to pursue their dreams. They have a much much more easy time than their predecessors.

      As for the rest winning bitches, find another subject to study, or become a mobile food vendor sellers, which requires little investment and can help them earn some money.

    2. I’d wager that the vast majority of female mathematicians are highly regarded mainly because of their sex. A man with the same achievements would likely just have been an also-ran. Keep in mind that the names you listed are not household names, while the most famous male mathematicians are. Everybody knows who Gauss was.

  6. I am not very versed in the works of Kowaleskaya to pass any judgment, but Emmy Noether was definitely among the most influential German mathematicians in the 19th century. A very young guy guy whom I know who is self-studying Algebraic Topology told me about her. She was very unusual for a female, definitely an outlier.

    As for Bari, very few people outside of Russia know about her because her research interest is very narrow. But from what I have read, her expertise is totally on par with Antoni Zygmund since both are specialists in trigonometric series (and Fourier analysis).

    1. It’s also important to remember that names of mathematicians are rarely known to the public. Sure, people know about Gauss, Euler, Lagrange or Laplace but these men are constantly publicized by various means (theorems bearing their names, historical books, etc). In that respect, they are like masters of classical music that has attained wide fame. But for the majority of great mathematicians, we don’t know. Think of names such as Emile Borel, Henri Lebesgue, Maurice Frechet or even Jules Tannery, like mathematicians from late 19th century, most people who don’t study Math have no clues who they are. Worst, people may not even know who is Niels H.Abel, Galois or even Nicholas Boubarki (I dislike this group’s books btw, only good if you know the subject already).

      1. I think you’re mixing up cause and effect. A mathematician has to produce absolutely stellar work to be known to the public. There is no female mathematician that meets that bar. That female mathematicians are promoted to the public over their male colleague is about as justified as mentioning astronaut Sally Ride but ignoring Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. This sounds ridiculous, and it is, yet you will see this on Khan Academy, where there is a badge for Sally Ride next to people like Newton.

      2. This is misogyny, Aaron. Then how do you explain the lack of famous jewish and chinese mathematicians, who you worship as the smartest people in the world? You need to stop letting your bias colour your conclusions. In fact you dont worship jews nearly enough as you should,if you were objective.

        Also i bet you didnt know pythagoras was a black dude. So you are horribly misinformed.

  7. “I think you’re mixing up cause and effect. A mathematician has to produce absolutely stellar work to be known to the public. There is no female mathematician that meets that bar. ”

    I have seen enough greatest mathematicians of the days comment absolutely positively on the works of Noether, and I think their opinions matter more than the rest of the public. When you have people from Hilbert to Pontryagin nod their heads, it means she had been approved by the greatest minds of the time.

    While what you say is true, there are mathematicians who make absolutely stellar work, but remain very obscure for a long time, such was the case of Bernhard Bolzano. His works have only been published in full in recent years. Before the last half of the 19th century, almost no-one knew about him.

    Using purely public fame to judge the works of a mathematician is definitely inadequate. This is especially true if their works are highly technical and are not even accessible to people who do not possess enough advanced knowledge.

    1. I don’t think you have much of an argument. Just think of two of the most important results in recent years, Perelman’s proof of the Poincaré conjecture and Wile’s proof of Fermat’s so-called last theorem. Both results are highly technical and impossible to understand in all their detail for a lay audience, and even for most professional mathematicians. Yet, their names are now known to the informed public.

      1. https://www.quantamagazine.org/sphere-packing-solved-in-higher-dimensions-20160330

        Here is the result of Maryna Viazovska.

        “Just think of two of the most important results in recent years, Perelman’s proof of the Poincaré conjecture and Wile’s proof of Fermat’s so-called last theorem. Both results are highly technical and impossible to understand in all their detail for a lay audience, and even for most professional mathematicians. Yet, their names are now known to the informed public.”

        You can read this here:
        ” We do have spectacular, deep and remarkable results and insights in this subject, of course, but they are the hard-won and cumulative achievement of years, decades, or even centuries of steady work and progress of many good and great mathematicians; the advance from one stage of understanding to the next can be highly non-trivial, and sometimes rather unexpected, but still builds upon the foundation of earlier work rather than starting totally anew. (This is for instance the case with Wiles‘ work on Fermat’s last theorem, or Perelman‘s work on the Poincaré conjecture.)”

        https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one-have-to-be-a-genius-to-do-maths/

        Researches in professional mathematics do not just spring out in thin air. It is built on by generations of mathematicians before someone can come last and claim the priority. In Perelman’s case, nothing could have helped him to achieve the final proof without great foundations laid down by Hamilton. The same can be said with works of Abel and Jacobi on elliptic functions. They simply cannot build their theories without having to know 40 years of deep research by Legendre.

        As an example, the public may know how Euler attained fame by solving the Basel Conjecture, yet almost none of them know that De Moivre has come up with an algorithm could have solved this problem by switching one simple variable. This result remains obscure until it was publicized in “Abraham De Moivre: Setting the Stage for Classical Probability and Its Applications”.

        For Noether’s case, her fame has been confirmed by all great mathematicians, so I don’t feel much need to defend her merit anymore. As for Bari, I’ve told you that mathematicians like her who work in a very narrow field will not likely to receive much attentions from the public.

      2. Very interesting thing you post about mathematics Isidia, you must be smart. I now place you third in ranking of smartest ppl visiting Aarons sites. Im first btw, and AlekNovy second.

        Btw, got any opinion about Ramanujan? I find it interesting that some white mathematician placed this Indian guy way above him. An inconvenient truth to white supremacists. From Wikipedia:

        K. Srinivasa Rao has said,[69] “As for his place in the world of Mathematics, we quote Bruce C. Berndt: ‘Paul Erdős has passed on to us Hardy’s personal ratings of mathematicians. Suppose that we rate mathematicians on the basis of pure talent on a scale from 0 to 100, Hardy gave himself a score of 25, J. E. Littlewood 30, David Hilbert 80 and Ramanujan 100.'” During a lecture at IIT Madras in May 2011, Berndt stated that over the last 40 years, as nearly all of Ramanujan’s theorems have been proven right, there had been greater appreciation of Ramanujan’s work and brilliance, and that Ramanujan’s work was now pervading many areas of modern mathematics and physics.[60][70]
        So sad that he then died prematurely because of his religious practices, and living in a time when nutritional deficiency was not well understood.

        Didnt India also invented the zero 0? But the guy who invented it is not known at all…Its obvious to me recognition of ones efforts, is not necessarily based just on content, but also marketing. Its the Steve Jobs-Wozniak thing. This is how I disproved efficient market theory, and will become a billionaire and win the nobel prize. So many brilliant ppl like me are unrecognized in the eyes of the public, what horror!

      3. “Very interesting thing you post about mathematics Isidia, you must be smart. I now place you third in ranking of smartest ppl visiting Aarons sites. Im first btw, and AlekNovy second.”

        Thanks for overrating me. I rank myself as nothing but an absolutely average student in Math at best, and below average as worse. Your above post is hilarious, btw.

      4. “Btw, got any opinion about Ramanujan? ”

        He is a unique exception, as to why, you can look it up. I just wish to make a remark here, his style is very similar to mathematicians before 19th century. Math culture has changed a lot since the end of the 18th century since the predominant style was very calculational and algorithmic. I’ve noticed after tracking down how Machin came up with his approximation of pi. This insight seems to be confirmed by this comment here:

        “Ramanujan showed that, if you were extremely determined and creative, you could be an Euler-style formalist centuries after everyone thought that that kind of math was completely mined out. ”

        https://www.quora.com/What-was-so-great-about-Srinivasa-Ramanujan

        My teacher calls people like Euler or Ramanujan as algorists.

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