Greetings, all -- Pamela's comments about pure and applied mathematics reminded me of this classic XKCD strip:
http://xkcd.com/435/ Happy Hols, - Claiborne - -----Original Message----- From: Pamela McCorduck <[email protected]> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]> Sent: Mon, Dec 12, 2011 9:31 am Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Primacy of Primeness! Ah, Peter, lovely story. By chance, we visited Bletchley Park on the day that the Brits returned--with great ceremony--an Enigma machine to the Poles, the people who'd first supplied the Brits with one. (We ourselves have two.) However, my sense is that pure mathematicians look down a tad on applied mathematicians. Okay if something you discovered/invented a hundred years ago turns out to have a practical use today, but to actually invent/discover math with the hope of finding an application for it, or with the hope of having it describe some phenomena--useful, sure; but, you know, intellectually tacky. P. On Dec 11, 2011, at 11:24 PM, [email protected] wrote: Prime Theory -- not to be Mocked, or Knocked! My tutor in grad school math at Cambridge was one Shaun Wylie, dead now; a famoso number expert. He was a supervisor at Bletchley where a chappie called Turing worked for him. They broke ENIGMA, that may have won the war -- certainly shortened it by a year or so. Interestingly, the Krauts were so convinced of their profs' bloody brilliance that for years they refused to believe that some bloody non-Aryan Limeys coulda broken it. Thus giving us lotsa running room! Being a young ignorant prick (now, regrettably, an Old IP), I made stupid jokes like that the number one to the nth power had n divisors. With his modest integrity, he quietly filled me in on some of the practical uses of prime theory for code breaking. And he NEVER just talked about math -- he DID things with it!! There is indeed " more in heaven and earth, Horatio, than thy philosophy dreams of". Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what to look for. 1454 Miracerros Loop South, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505,USA tel:(505)983-7728 ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
