>“He had formulas that enabled him to pull off his magic,” Pitt said. “And I didn’t have the formulas.”<p>The more I do pure mathematics, the more I realize just how important these kinds of insights are. Very often, solving a theoretical problem involves two key ingredients:<p>1. Rewriting your problem in a particular way, so that it is amenable to a certain suite of methods/looks like known results.<p>2. Apply a key bit of knowledge gleaned from intuition. This is unrelated to the formal way the problem was written down.<p>Sometimes, showing your intuition is true formally actually takes a lot of work. And for some proofs, looking at the problem a particular way makes the solution obvious on its own, with no need for a step 2. And other times, like this, all the technical tools in the world are no match for just <i>knowing</i> the right piece of information.
This is from 2017, previous discussion here: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13977554" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13977554</a>
It would be nice if the title named the proof. Math is a giant field, and very few HNers are mathematicians or interested in any particular area of mathematics, so it would be helpful to know what the general topic is without clicking on the link and reading a few paragraphs.<p>"A Retiree Discovers an Elusive Math Proof of the Gaussian Correlation Inequality (2017)"
I'm sorry to be mean, but this title is stupid and condescending. He didn't use Word to solve the problem, he used Word to write the paper about the solution. It really has nothing to do with how the problem was actually solved. Might as well claim he "used Windows" to solve the problem.
It seems like a stretch to call this a big discovery in the math world. Even if it had been published in a top journal etc, it would be unlikely to be heralded as a major achievement.
(regarding the current title of this submission, in case it gets changed:)<p>>This 67-year-old retiree solved a math problem–using Microsoft Word<p>What does Microsoft Word have to do with this? The fact that the document was typeset in Microsoft Word instead of LaTeX does not really sound remarkable.
This is based on experience, i used to teach math. (~4000)<p>And i found it easier to teach math to people whoes father, grandfather, great grandfather all had masters in math.<p>So, i wonder if mathematical abilities are in genes and gene function changes when you bring a person with such genes into a math intense environment.