One-downmanship in mathematics
May. 22nd, 2021 10:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
come_to_thinkFeynman thought he was pretty smart until he met Fermi:
So I told Fermi I was doing this problem, and I started to describe the results. He said, "Wait, before you tell me the result, let me think. It's going to come out like this (he was right), and it's going to come out like this because of so and so. And there's a perfectly obvious explanation for this---"
He was doing what I was supposed to be good at, ten times better. That was quite a lesson to me. ---Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
Fermi thought he was pretty smart until he met von Neumann:
You know, Herb, Johnny can do calculations in his head ten times as fast as I can. And I can do them ten times as fast as you can, so you can see how impressive Johnny is. ---https://cantorsparadise.substack.com/p/the-unparalleled-genius-of-john-von-beb?fbclid=IwAR2sTapF5z9_6z0KkuBnjTgrnXXMvvUnyHYvP-nVP59jFXDUemSdleZmqzI
So I told Fermi I was doing this problem, and I started to describe the results. He said, "Wait, before you tell me the result, let me think. It's going to come out like this (he was right), and it's going to come out like this because of so and so. And there's a perfectly obvious explanation for this---"
He was doing what I was supposed to be good at, ten times better. That was quite a lesson to me. ---Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
Fermi thought he was pretty smart until he met von Neumann:
You know, Herb, Johnny can do calculations in his head ten times as fast as I can. And I can do them ten times as fast as you can, so you can see how impressive Johnny is. ---https://cantorsparadise.substack.com/p/the-unparalleled-genius-of-john-von-beb?fbclid=IwAR2sTapF5z9_6z0KkuBnjTgrnXXMvvUnyHYvP-nVP59jFXDUemSdleZmqzI
