What is the strangest math that turned out to be useful?
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There have been a number of Scientific discoveries that seemed to be purely scientific curiosities that later turned out to be incredibly useful. Hertz famously commented about the discovery of radio waves: “I do not think that the wireless waves I have discovered will have any practical application.”
Are there examples like this in math as well? What is the most interesting "pure math" discovery that proved to be useful in solving a real-world problem?
The first few people to discover natural logarithms in the 1600s probably felt like they unlocked some weird pattern of the universe that repeats in a bunch of different naturally occurring settings for exponential growth or decay
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There have been a number of Scientific discoveries that seemed to be purely scientific curiosities that later turned out to be incredibly useful. Hertz famously commented about the discovery of radio waves: “I do not think that the wireless waves I have discovered will have any practical application.”
Are there examples like this in math as well? What is the most interesting "pure math" discovery that proved to be useful in solving a real-world problem?
If I recall correctly, one mathematician in the 1800s solved a very difficult line integral, and the first application of it was in early computer speech synthesis.
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The math fun fact I remember best from college is that Charles Boole invented Boolean algebra for his doctoral thesis and his goal was to create a branch of mathematics that was useless. For those not familiar with boolean algebra it works by using logic gates with 1s and 0s to determine a final 1 or 0 state and is subsequently the basis for all modern digital computing
Was he trying to dunk on his professors?
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Complex numbers. Also known as imaginary numbers. The imaginary number
iis the solution to√-1. And it is really used in quantum mechanics and I think general relativity as well.It's used extensively in electronic circuit design (where it's called "j", as "i' already meant electronic current).
Also signal processing has i or j all over it.
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I wonder if complex numbers predate the discovery of electromagnetism
Yes, mathematicians first encountered equations which could only be solved with complex numbers in the 16th century.
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Yes, and 1 is also a complex number.
Of course, but 1 is the loneliest number.
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This talk by Freya Holmer on Quarternions is awesome and worth anybody’s time that like computer graphics, computer science, or just math.
That was a cool watch. Thanks.
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DES is symmetric key cryptography. It doesn't rely on the difficulty of factorizing large semi-primes. It did use a 56-bit key, though.
Public key cryptography (DSA, RSA, Elliptic Curve) does rely on these things and yes it's a 4096-bit key these days (up from 1024 in the older days).
thank you
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If I recall correctly, one mathematician in the 1800s solved a very difficult line integral, and the first application of it was in early computer speech synthesis.
the man you're thinking of is, I believe, George Boole, the inventor of Boolean algebra.
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The math fun fact I remember best from college is that Charles Boole invented Boolean algebra for his doctoral thesis and his goal was to create a branch of mathematics that was useless. For those not familiar with boolean algebra it works by using logic gates with 1s and 0s to determine a final 1 or 0 state and is subsequently the basis for all modern digital computing
George Boole introduced Boolean algebra, not Charles. Charles, according to this site on the Boole family, he had a career in management of a mining company.
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The math fun fact I remember best from college is that Charles Boole invented Boolean algebra for his doctoral thesis and his goal was to create a branch of mathematics that was useless. For those not familiar with boolean algebra it works by using logic gates with 1s and 0s to determine a final 1 or 0 state and is subsequently the basis for all modern digital computing
Shoutout to Satyendra Nath Bose who helped pioneer relativity as a theoretical physicist because he didn't want to study something useful that would benefit the British.
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Was he trying to dunk on his professors?
Yes and no
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There have been a number of Scientific discoveries that seemed to be purely scientific curiosities that later turned out to be incredibly useful. Hertz famously commented about the discovery of radio waves: “I do not think that the wireless waves I have discovered will have any practical application.”
Are there examples like this in math as well? What is the most interesting "pure math" discovery that proved to be useful in solving a real-world problem?
Having watched all the veritasium math videos I feel like all the major breakthroughs in math were due to mathemicians playing around with numbers or brain teasers out of curiosity without a concrete use case in mind.
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Be honest, how many unofficial experiments were there?
You ever just start lasering shit for kicks?
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Reminds me of that scene from Ali G
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Of course, but 1 is the loneliest number.
2 is as bad as 1: it's the loneliest number since the number 1.
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Does this count? Because it really is wtf.
The exact example I also thought of from the question! Well done
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Doom absolutely counts!
Quake, not Doom. Doom didn't use true 3D rendering and had almost no dynamic lighting.
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Be honest, how many unofficial experiments were there?
You ever just start lasering shit for kicks?
Probably not as many as we'd like to think. I recently got to run a few days of tests at Lawrence Livermore National Labs with an absurdly massive laser. At one point we needed to bring in a small speaker for an audio test. It took the lab techs and managers about two hours and a couple phone calls to some higher ups to make sure it was ok and wouldn't damage anything. There's so much red tape and procedure in the way that I don't think there's an opportunity to just fuck around. The laser has irreplaceable parts that people aren't willing to jeopardize. Newer or smaller lasers are going to be more relaxed. This one is old enough to be my father, and it's LLNL's second biggest single laser iirc. And they are the lab using lasers for fusion, so they have big lasers.
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A brain teaser about visiting all islands connected by bridges without crossing the same bridge twice is now the basis of all internet routing. (Graph theory)
freaking freaky little Russian outpost that one is. Bridges galore
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There have been a number of Scientific discoveries that seemed to be purely scientific curiosities that later turned out to be incredibly useful. Hertz famously commented about the discovery of radio waves: “I do not think that the wireless waves I have discovered will have any practical application.”
Are there examples like this in math as well? What is the most interesting "pure math" discovery that proved to be useful in solving a real-world problem?
The invention of the number 0, the discovery of irrational numbers, or l the realization that base 60 math makes sense for anything round, including timekeeping.
