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From: ttp@kestrel.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.math
Subject: Re: a piece of folk-lore
Message-ID: <1342@kestrel.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 25-Sep-85 17:03:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: kestrel.1342
Posted: Wed Sep 25 17:03:36 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Sep-85 08:02:45 EDT
References: <1799@psuvax1.UUCP> <9600018@uiucdcsp>
Organization: Kestrel Institute, Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 57
Summary: legends are crap?

In article <9600018@uiucdcsp>, leimkuhl@uiucdcsp.CS.UIUC.EDU writes:

** are mine. ttp

> But you know, famous academicians tend to become the focus
> of an abundance of jokes, mythical conversations, and legends.  **My
> theory is that they are 99% crap.**  

It would be nice to know if such legends did, in fact, happen.

> Some scientists seem even to propagate these stories themselves;
> Feynmann, for example, seems to be trying to bury himself in fiction.
> Partly this is great egotism-- **by encouraging myths that call attention
> to his peculiar genius, Feynmann appears larger than life** ..

I think Feynmann, in his book "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynmann" is
NOT trying to make himself larger than life.  I think it is remarkable
that he admits that he liked to impress others with his brilliance,
and then describes several schemes that he had that would make him
appear brilliant: e.g.  rattling off the answer to a problem he had
previously solved without adding that he'd seen it before. I wish this
book had been available when I was at CalTech, where Feynmann was a
God. His book conveys only that he's  very sharp and quirky, but
understandably human.

> ordered them to sum the integers from 1 to 100.
> A few minutes pass and Gauss (the worst of the brats) cheerily announces
> the answer.  He is said to have recognized the trick of forming the
> pairs (100+1), (99+2),..,(51+50), and so to have seen that the answer was 
> just 50*101--this for the first time!
> I don't know whether this is true or false--there's no doubt
> that Gauss at age ten was a far better mathematician than most of us
> will ever hope to be--but notice how this story is still quite popular.

The one mentioned for Gauss was recounted in modified form in the book
"Men of Mathematics" by E.T. Bell.  There was an emphasis on addition
training, and the sums were separated by a fixed number, not 1. Maybe
Gauss had already solved this problem. Maybe he hadn't.

Perhaps the reason it is still quite popular is that this derivation
for the sum of the integers is very intuitive, so perhaps lends
verisimilitude to the idea that a 10 year old developed it. A slight
generalization allows one to express the sums of certain powers in
terms of sums of lower powers.

> I think Einstein had a particular problem
> with being made the center of stories--his famous line "God doesn't
> play dice with the universe"  may not have been his.  (He is said to
> stated this at a banquet in an argument with a quantum theorist.)
> -Ben Leimkuhler

Notice that this story makes Einstein look stodgy, because, if one
accepts quantum mechanics, "God" DOES play dice with the universe.
So why is this saying famous? Because it sounds good to people
ignorant of quantum mechanics?

-tom


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