/sci/ - Science & Math

>>15957560
Or any other genius mathematician.

Hold a backgammon tournament.

>>15957560
do that truck where it looks like you're pulling your thumb off

>>15957560
>those layman are soooooo dumb and ignorant
>i'm totally a unique super special snowflake genius
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/narcissistic-personality-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20366662

>>15957616
I think I am the layman in this scenario.

>>15957560
A layman who cares about math or one who doesn't? If the second just shut up about this shit if you ever want them to talk to you again, but if you must probably just tell them the story about adding 1+2+....+100 really fast when he was a kid because he noticed it was 101x50.

- as a teenager solved the ancient problem of which regular polygons were constructible by ruler and compass, using ideas later expanded by Galois to solve *another* centuries-old problem
- gave first proof of quadratic reciprocity (and then 7 more proofs) and later discovered and proved biquadratic reciprocity
- as a teenager made a breakthrough towards solving Fermat's second-to-last theorem (later fully proven by Cauchy)
- discovered non-euclidean geometry years before anyone else but couldn't be bothered to publish or tell anyone about it and let Lobachevsky and Bolyai take credit 20 years later
- was technically the first person to prove that numbers can be uniquely factored into primes, not because it was hard but just because no one else had ever bothered to actually do it

>>15957923
There is no way I am conceding someone smarter than Euler existed. Also OP won't really understand how difficult these feats were.

There were surely people around Gauss who had put 15,000+ hours into math (something which is incredibly common) and could not solve these problems.

>>15957616
Mathematicians statistically have some of the lowest most humbly egos of any profession. There is constant pressure to be a super genius and making even one mistake is a cardinal sin.

You could be a child prodigy with an IQ of 145, but spend years struggling to be good enough.

From the outside you have to be very careful not to be seen as a narcissist, and there is no good way to explain the depth, absurdity, and beauty of math to outsiders.

>>15957560
>How would you convey the genius of Carl Friedrich Gauss to a layman?
My lecturer professor joked that almost every branch of maths and science had something named after Gauss

>>15957923
There is no way I am not conceding someone smarter than Euler existed. Euler was barely human.
>>15957560
>>15957923
To put these problems in perspective, there were surely many people who had put 15,000+ hours into math who could not solve these problems.

>>15957923
A layman who is interested in math but has no experience further than what he was taught in high school (me). Appreciate the response that's quite interesting.

>>15957948
In mathematics it's not about making a mistake, it's about making correct proofs out of many failed attempts.

Something that a worthless piece of shit midwit like yourself wouldn't be able to do.
Just countless mistakes after mistakes...