this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2024
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Math Is Still Catching Up to the Mysterious Genius of Srinivasa Ramanujan (www.quantamagazine.org)
submitted 3 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Very interesting read despite not knowing any advanced maths.

So my question(s) to mathematicians is: What does knowing these connections do for the field? What kind of things will this lead to? Feel free to speculate or give examples of other seemingly-small math discoveries that led to modern technology!

I don't mean that dismissively, I just don't understand why this is so important because the implications are beyond my skillset

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Number Theory, the field where Ramanujam had bigger impact, used to be pure mathematics, with no expected use and basically a hobby for mathematicians, is the base of modern encryption and without it the internet as we know it couldn't exist.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Interesting! Do you have any guesses as to what sort of applications partition identities might see?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I'm an actuarie, so I'm thinking in an insurance related way it could they have some use. Imagine a re insurance contract (the insurance that insurance companies buy to protect themselves) that pay after an S = sum Xi value of cumulative claims is reached (i = 1, 2, 3... number of claims, X = value of each claim) . How many ways can S be reached, given that they are N claims, with variable X?

For example, S = 4, that value can be reached by X = 4, X1= 3 + X2 = 1, and so on. Knowing the number of ways you can reach that S value, can help you with the pricing of the contract, or forecasting to when the S value is going to be reached.

Other than that, they are distributed computer power, if you need S computer power, how many ways can this value be reached knowing that you have access to N GPUs each one with Xi capacity.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

Very interesting example with the insurance but it was your second idea that really brought it home for me. Thanks for elaborating!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

Check out the movie "The Man Who Knew Infinity" for a dramatization.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

Great read, thank you