Quote from Plato

[flouran]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

You're not Plato.

This isn't Plato's academy.

Mersenneforum.org has, from the beginning, been a public forum with no entrance requirement. It is not your classroom. You are neither the forum creator nor its administrator.

You have no obligation to respond to posts from folks ignorant of secondary school mathematics. It has been repeatedly suggested that you simply leave responding to such postings to other forum members.

If you cannot resist the compulsion to berate folks whose postings don't meet your standards, or to repeatedly complain about them, perhaps OCD treatment could help you.

Are there any particular obstacles to your starting your own separate forum where you make the rules?

Couldn't have said it better!

[flouran]

Originally Posted by R.D. Silverman

A quote posted over the entrance to Plato's academy:

"Let no man ignorant of geometry enter"

I propose that we put up a sign for the Mersenneforum:

"Let noone ignorant of secondary school mathematics enter"

How about this?
You should make your own forum called ElitistMathematicians.org. I'm sure your site will receive many hits.

Just a suggestion...

[retina]

Originally Posted by flouran

How about this?
You should make your own forum called ElitistMathematicians.org. I'm sure your site will receive many hits.

Just a suggestion...

You can't judge the quality of a site by the single metric of number of hits. Popularity != quality.

[flouran]

Originally Posted by retina

You can't judge the quality of a site by the single metric of number of hits. Popularity != quality.

Did I ever explicitly mention in my post that I was judging quality by the number of hits?

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by retina

Popularity != quality.

Of course not. That's why Google doesn't list sites according to how many other sites link ... oh, wait ... it does rank them that way, doesn't it?

[petrw1]

Originally Posted by R.D. Silverman

"Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human.
At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe,
and not make messes in the house. "

Robert A. Heinlein

Hmmm, Mr Heinlein is quite a source for quotes.


http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_A._Heinlein

Some of my favorites include:

How can I possibly put a new idea into your heads, if I do not first remove your delusions?

One can judge from experiment, or one can blindly accept authority. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is all important and theory is merely a convenience in description, to be junked when it no longer fits. To the academic mind, authority is everything and facts are junked when they do not fit theory laid down by authority.

You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.

The capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repressive action has never yet been plumbed.

Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done. One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen.

Aside from a cold appreciation of my own genius I felt that I was a modest man.

Take sides! Always take sides! You will sometimes be wrong — but the man who refuses to take sides must always be wrong.

Democracy can't work. Mathematicians, peasants, and animals, that's all there is — so democracy, a theory based on the assumption that mathematicians and peasants are equal, can never work. Wisdom is not additive; its maximum is that of the wisest man in a given group.

Progress doesn't come from early risers — progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

Human beings hardly ever learn from the experience of others. They learn; when they do, which isn't often, on their own, the hard way.

What are the facts? Again and again and again — what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what "the stars foretell," avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable "verdict of history" — what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!

In this complex world, science, the scientific method, and the consequences of the scientific method are central to everything the human race is doing and to wherever we are going. If we blow ourselves up we will do it by misapplication of science; if we manage to keep from blowing ourselves up, it will be through intelligent application of science.

[fivemack]

There is some pretty high-level mathematics discussion on the Web - look at, say, http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2010/0...ions/#comments.

Terence Tao is a first-order genius, Fields medallist, full professor at UCLA; unsurprisingly, his blog is not comprehensible to the lay reader and attracts only commentators prepared to make the effort. I'd be amazed if it got a thousandth as many hits as mersenneforum; I'd be very unwilling to call it less valuable.

http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=304 (linked to from Terence's blog) is also perhaps worth reading in this context. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning...3Kruger_effect

[fivemack]

http://mathoverflow.net

[Batalov]

I was completely blown away when discussing with my friend the assumed troubles between his daughter and her math teacher I came to realization that he just doesn't accept that zero is an even number. And violently so. After reading Wikipedia and some other web browsing, I further realized that he is far from being alone. Now, I will not be surprized if the math teacher will lose her job because most of the parent's will argue to the school board that she teaches their children "wrong". (Of course, not just because of zero; another lengthy discussion ensued about four as opposed to three possible outcomes of a two coin toss etc etc.)

Gotta love Heinlein... now with Russel, Plato and Dunning-Kruger extension. (Thanks, Tom!)

[davieddy]

Originally Posted by xilman

My response still stands. The original stated "How about a forum ..." ---emphasis added.

Nothing there about Mersenneforum per se. If Bob, or anyone else, wants to set up a forum with such an entry requirement I will support the endeavour.

Paul

In the context of the "math or maths" thread, I intended "forum"
to mean "sub(?)forum" as in "Lounge" or "Math" or "Misc Math".
George refers to mersenneforum.org as "The Mersenneforums".

In the light of this thread, and the latest round of RDS bashing in
the "Math" forum, I think the discussion of categorization and location
of the mathsy subfora could profitably be revived.

I, for one, consider my maths to lie somewhere
between "Silvermanproof" and "crackpot or novice".

David

[Mathew]

Originally Posted by R.D. Silverman

"Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. "

Robert A. Heinlein

I'm probably going to get put on Silverman's ignore list for this, which would be too bad some of his replies are quite interesting.

"A "critic" is a man who creates nothing and thereby feels qualified to judge the work of creative men. There is logic in this; he is unbiased — he hates all creative people equally."

Robert A. Heinlein

Since this does not apply to you here.

Just do a search in the Math or Miscellaneous Math treads and look for threads started by you. These would be all those impeccably written conjectures.

The closest thing I see to a conjecture that you started here was Generalization of Brun's Constant which started out with a simple copy and paste, and finished with questions. No attached file with an attempt of a proof. Then in your very next post to this thread you gave the following comment. "I did not give it adequate thought." You did, however have proper notation. Also, you were able to avoid the "I call it the Silverman constant, Silverman prime, etc." type of sentence.

I do apologize if you take this as a flippant remark. I am just trying to show you a different perspective.

Thank you for your time,

Mathew