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1500 questions
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How and when was Bolzano's proof of the Bolzano-Weierstrass theorem rediscovered?
I've always been curious about how great forgotten ideas are rediscovered. This question: Are there written (19th century) sources expressing the belief that the intermediate value property is equivalent to continuity? led me to the following…
Wandering Logic
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What was the notion of limit that Newton used?
I have read that the notion of limit became rigorous two centuries after the discover of calculus
What Newton had in his mind regarding the notion of limit?
veronika
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Was English mathematics behind Europe by many years because of Newton's notation?
Below are several quotes suggesting that Newton's notation had the effect of retarding English mathematics by 50 years, 100 years, or even centuries.
Here is my simplistic two-sentence historical account of what happened (based on my reading of the…
user67
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How did Stephen Hawking conduct research?
Stephen Hawking was highly prolific. Compared to a regular person, how quickly could he communicate language to the people assisting him with his research? (e.g. compared to the human average of 40 or 200 characters per minute).
What was this…
Josh
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How certain is it that Lucas invented the Towers of Hanoi puzzle?
Wikipedia is unequivocal:
The puzzle was invented by the French mathematician Édouard Lucas in 1883.
I have no reason to doubt this, but given the many legends surrounding the topic,
I wonder if there is not an earlier (even "ancient")…
Joseph O'Rourke
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Are Leibnizian infinitesimals thought to be logical fictions by Leibniz scholars?
Japanese scholar Hide Ishiguro published a book in 1990 entitled "Leibniz's philosophy of logic and language" (second edition). Of particular interest, as far as the history of mathematics is concerned, is her Chapter 5.
Here she presents an…
Mikhail Katz
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Who coined the term ''Born's rule''?
Who assigned the term ''Born's rule'' to the statement that the measurement of a quantum observable is one of its eigenvalues, with a probability given by the square of the coefficient in the spectral expansion of the system state?
I checked the…
Arnold Neumaier
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Are there any theorems that become "lost" and discarded over time?
I read that Descartes and some other mathematician figured out a 'double tangent' method (as I think it was called) for calculating a derivative of a conic or some curve without using the concepts of limits or infinitesimals. There was an article…
201044
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Poincaré and the baker: was the anecdote true?
There is a story featuring Henri Poincaré and an unscrupuolous baker. Every day Poincaré bought a piece of bread which should have weighted 1 kg. After an year, the mathematician brought the baker to the judge: he weighted all the pieces of bread…
mau
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How did Milikan know that oil drops would acquire only few electron charges?
In the book of Experiment in Modern Physics, by Melissinos, at page 2, it is given that:
2. The Millikan Oil Drop Experiment
In 1909, R. Millikan reported a reliable method for measuring ionic charges. It consists of observing the motion of small…
Our
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What explanations are there for this strong spike in the use of 'angular momentum' in the 1960s?
A recent comment called my attention to the Google Ngram for 'angular momentum', which shows a very strong and rather sharp peak in the usage of the phrase shortly after 1960, followed by a steady decline with a loss of ~60% of the original…
Emilio Pisanty
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Why is the letter $\vec{r}$ used for position?
I'm sorry if this is a dumb question but I've never heard a convincing explanation for why seemingly all of physics names the position vector "$\vec{r}$". I've tried translating it into just about every language that would make sense, and I've asked…
Jules Randolph
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Why are the classic statistical approaches to NLP mostly generative models while the most recent ones are mostly discriminative?
Looking at the classic statistical approaches to natural language processing (e.g. tagging, parsing, etc.), I see that they are mostly generative models: n-gram models, Naive Bayes classifiers, hidden Markov models, probabilistic context‐free…
Franck Dernoncourt
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Did Turing invent the imitation game? Did he name it?
In his 1950 paper in Mind titled "Computer Machinery and Intelligence" which introduces the test that now bears his name, Alan Turing starts by describing a game which he calls the "Imitation Game", which is played between three players, a man (A),…
Gro-Tsen
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Concerning the measurement of the Earth's circumference by Eratosthenes
I. In an episode of his Cosmos series, Carl Sagan discussed the brilliant argument whereby Eratosthenes purportedly estimated the circumference of our planet. At one point of the episode, Carl Sagan seemed to imply that one of the first…
José Hdz. Stgo.
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