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llm_trw11/21/20242 repliesview on HN

There's a difference between being able to memorize what a square root is and being able to do math - which to mathematicians means being able to organize a proof.

I've found that the people who most believe in math being a genetic ability are the ones who do not work in the symbolic world of modern math, but in the semantic world of whatever the field the math describes is.

The two are rather different.


Replies

Tainnor11/21/2024

Square roots are not some "mathematical trivia", they're amongst the most fundamental operations in mathematics.

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tgv11/21/2024

Strangely enough, you'd be hard pressed to find a mathematician who doesn't know what a square root is.

And I didn't mention genetics. Nature is complicated.

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