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@ Mariano
(Todd puts in evidence the fact that this forum, which tons better than m.se's meta, does not make referring to previous posts in a discussion easy at all!)
at the nForum we run (well, Andrew Stacey does) the same software as here. Somehow we have an option enabled such that each comment in a thread comes with a number (1,2,3,etc), and this is very helpful in referring to posts. For example, Todd's comment that he recently quoted for context is #19 in this thread (I counted by hand).
I would welcome similar challenges from Prof. Zeilberger, whoever she may be.
Gerhard "Bill Parcells" Paseman?
To reiterate what David Roberts said, the software underlying this forum is the same as that at the nForum but I've put in place a few more plugins. It would be easy for Scott to install those plugins, he just needs the motivation! So if there's some feature you'd like to see at this forum, bug him to install it and I'm sure he will.
Gerhard, it seems stankewicz is trying to subtly point out your referring to DZ as "she" (just in case you didn't know, Doron Zeilberger is male). There was a semi-famous incident where Bill Parcells referred to the American-football player Terry Glenn as a "she".
My reading of Gerhard's comment was actually different. Namely, that he wanted to express his persistent doubt that the question was posted by the actual Doron Zeilberger, which he could also have done via saying 'whoever he might be' [IMO, he would not believe it really is Doron Zeilberger and say 'whoever he might be', I'd find this rather impolite and Gerhard is for all I have seen very polite]; and the usage of 'she' instead of 'he' is made to stress this and/or just avoiding always using 'he' generically.
I'm repasting a comment from Doron Zeilberger which seems relevant to this discussion:
Joro did a great job, but still it took his computer two hours. Shalosh can do it in two seconds once it found the quasi-polynomial expression for p_60(n), and it found it in 400 seconds. So Shalosh does first symbol-crunching then number-crunching.
Sounds like an Opinion to me. Like I said, I don't think it sets a good precedent to allow Zeilberger to use MO as a soapbox, especially in this veiled and mildly incomprehensible way. (Shalosh, by the way, is the name of Zeilberger's computer.)
Joro said it took two hours and DZ says it can be done in 2 (+ 400) seconds when done differently. Where is the Opinion?
Sorry, I should have given more details. Zeilberger has a blog of sorts called Opinions of Doron Zeilberger where he discusses issues related to computer mathematics, its superiority over human mathematics, and that sort of thing. That comment is very much like the kind of thing you can read in his Opinions. It is interesting stuff, but he is still not asking a question to which he doesn't know the answer (nor is he explaining his own method for others to learn from).
That doesn't sound like an Opinion to me either, but "soapbox" can be read in a number of different ways. One being a perch from which to boast of one's powerful results or ideas in a completely unsolicited way. Other people have tried that and have had their "questions" shut down immediately, without a whimper of protest from anyone -- rightly so, for it really is an improper way to use MO.
I can't be 100% sure this is what he's doing, and since Prof. Zeilberger has been resolutely silent with regard to queries, we will probably never know. But this is how it looks to me. To make matters worse, it's just this raw boast without any attempt to share knowledge or insight. I just don't get it.
Qiaochu, thank you for the detais, probably I should, too, have been more precise: I know these Opinions.
Todd, this seems an uncharitable interpretation to me.
In any case, while I (of course) do not know either what was the intention, I found this in various aspects admittedly unusual question interesting and fun. In short, I liked it. But, I can see how one might not like it.
quid: what was interesting and fun about it for you? (I'm asking sincerely, not to challenge you.)
(Edit: By the way, where was the question?)
The interesting things for me are that:
a. I was informed, or rather reminded, how to compute this fairly efficiently (joro's solution)
b. I was informed that there is a different way (Zeilberger's solution), the details of which are not yet clear to me, but perhaps they will appear eventually on the site, or I could follow up on it elsewhere [perhaps not yet if the thing should be very new, but eventually it will be on his website, I suppose].
The fun part is that this unfolded in a playful way. Some strangely particular request...noone knows what the purpose is...but one could be essentially sure there is something 'hidden' and...eventually it was (partly) revealed.
Now, the fun part is fun IMO if this happens (very) rarely. If every other question would be of this form I would certainly find it quite annoying; and I can even understand that one does never find this type of thing funny, but still I do (sometimes).
The question was: Can you/one compute this (fast/efficiently)?
And, an answer or answers to this question can even be useful to somebody who knows a method or even methods to do it him/herself. Because others could have different ideas; or even just carry out the same idea more efficiently.
One possibe rephrasing could be (I am not sure if this was the intention): I have a (new/not widely known) method to compute p_60(n). [Explanation or not.] I would be interested in knowing how it compares to known/standard methods. Thus, I would be interested in the time it takes others to compute p_60(10^100).
But it would be much less fun this way.
Personal note: for completely unrelated reasons I will be off-line soon and not too much around in the days to come, sorry in advance in case I should not follow up (in a timely manner).
Thank you, quid. That was a nice response, and I think you have an interesting take on it.
Maybe I should bow out now -- I've done enough talking. Myself, I would have preferred your suggested rephrasing, or something along those lines [it could still be fun!].
Second, I am not sure it is an improper way to use MO. Suppose that somebody had asked a question: what is the best known upper bound for the number of groups with n elements. And then after people will mention what is known he will mention in a comment an even better bound that he discovered. I would see nothing wrong with it, in fact it will be quite welcome. Suppose you have reasons to believe that he actually is quite familiar with the known upper bounds but really wanted to announce his new result. Frankly, I would see nothing wrong with it either. (And always he can be surprised by a result he did not know.)
This would be more than fine if, in the end, the OP explained how she obtained her own answer (in a way that someone not familiar with the technique would be able to follow), which Zeilberger has thus far not done.
suppose you disagree with me and do think that there is something worng with such a behavior and vote to close the question based on your speculation on what the OP knows which is based on his mathematical reputation. This would be inappropriate since it discriminates against known mathematicians.
I think "discrimination" is the wrong word here. If this question had been asked by a random user, I would have wondered several things: why is the user offering a cash prize? Does the user know the standard techniques for solving such problems? If not, why isn't the user asking about those techniques? If it came out in the comments that the OP was unfamiliar with standard techniques, somebody would have posted an answer explaining them, and everything would be fine.
I can skip that step with Zeilberger because I am positive he is aware of the standard techniques (as evidenced by his explanation of how Shalosh solved the problem). That's not discrimination, except insofar as it's the use of extra information in a special case that isn't available in the general case. Based on what I know about Zeilberger, I can guess at his actual motivation for posting the problem, and that guess is problematic.
Of course it can be argued that we should give new users, especially prominent new users, the benefit of the doubt. I suppose that's fine. At the beginning of this thread I was hazarding a guess, not arguing that we should definitely be making decisions based on that guess.
In response to Gil:
First I don't remember any such case. Any examples?
It might take me a while to dig up an example, since I've forgotten specifics. (I'm not sure I'll get around to it, because I'm busy with other stuff.)
Suppose that somebody had asked a question: what is the best known upper bound for the number of groups with n elements. And then after people will mention what is known he will mention in a comment an even better bound that he discovered.
That would be completely appropriate. I would have been much happier had Zeilberger approached the matter in something like that manner.
Although it was claimed that DZ's question had been closed if he was not a well known mathematicians many of the arguments in this thread goes the other direction and represents bias against known mathematician.
I don't think so. I think it would be great if DZ became active here. I think Qiaochu in his response has expressed some of what I find problematic about the question itself.
Welcome to meta, Joel. I think people are on the whole polite because generally speaking it's professional to do so. (There are some exceptions of course.) Just a couple of responses: I think joro was kidding around, and not ribbing DZ so much as he was those who were discussing closing the question as not suitable for MO. Speaking of my own behavior, I do have second thoughts about voicing what quid referred to as an uncharitable interpretation.
I do agree with you that it would be nice if DZ had entered the discussion (and I still hope he will). But I wouldn't necessarily attribute this to arrogance or anything like that; he may well have his reasons, based on long past experience. I think it is fair to say that his general point of view is dissenting from the "mainstream" mathematical culture. And so I would imagine that he "chooses his battles" carefully. This may be one of those times where he decides to spend his time and energy elsewhere.
joro, I did not downvote Peter's answer, but what is not clear (to me) is whether or not he actually did/can do what was asked for. It was stressed that the question is for the exact number. Now, he posted a (correct) approximation, without indication whether this is done in such a form merely to save space or whether he only has an approximation (also see Doron Zeilberger's comment). So, I can see why somebody would downvote this.
And, thanks for the link to the Colman paper!
I do not agree with Professor Kalai that this incident represents "bias against known mathematicians" (post #69 if I counted correctly). If this question is asked by some one unknown, it would have been closed faster (I think the money offer part alone would have attracted a few close votes).
Reading the thread, it seems to me that the most charitable interpretation of the question is the OP wanted to demonstrate the power of his method over the usual approach. While the new approach itself might be very interesting mathematically, I am not sure we should encourage such things on MO. Most of us can ask a few questions which no one can answer better than ourselves, so open a door to such questions is not a good idea, in my opinion.
To bend the rules for a well-known expert is not right, for reasons others have pointed out. But it is not even beneficial. By doing so we may actually discomfort many quiet observers, among them might be a) other top experts, b) people who will become top experts in the future.
There are many brilliant mathematicians on MO whose behavior has always been respectful and professional. I (and probably many young people) learned a lot from how they carry themselves as well as the actual mathematics. Fortunately for us, there seem to be many of them around.
In view of Hailong Dao's comment I would like to repeat explictly a point I made earlier more implictly:
I am actively in favor of "bending the rules" for new users that are mathematicians (well-known or not). [And, although Doron Zeilberger apparently once answered a question more than a year ago, I think he is in essence a new user.]
For example, one main criticism of the question was that the questioner (seems to) know the answer. However, where is it documented that one should not know/must not know an answer to a question one asks here?
In principle, one could well imagine a Q&A site where people also (or even mainly) challenge each other with carefully selected questions. This site is not like this, and I do not wish to suggest any change, but how does one know this if one just arrived? (I just had a glance through the FAQs and did not see it anywhere, but might have overlooked it yet at least it seems to me it is not prominently written anywhere.)
Secondary point and subjective: overall, in agreement with Gil Kalai, I believe Doron Zeilberger had no advantage from his off-line reputation here; rather to the contrary.
Dear Professor Kalai,
If you would kindly suggest a more respectful way to phrase the term "..it seems to me that the most charitable interpretation of the question is..", I would gladly change it. It was my honest impression after reading the thread, but frequently I find it difficult to express myself well in English. I used the word "charitable" since it has been used in the thread. Please help me here!
As for the other points, I respectfully disagree (but would be happy to be proven wrong).
Best regards,
Long
I agree with Andres that we should close this thread. Since DZ does not seem inclined to explain what he was trying to do here, us sitting around speculating about it is counterproductive and seems to be getting people upset over something that just wasn't very important in the first place.
Dear Professor Kalai,
Thank you for the example. I am not sure it is comparable to our situation. As far as I know, question of the type "I do not understand a point in this paper/book, please explain" is widely accepted on MO. Also, the timing/topic of the question may contribute to how fast it attracts enough people to vote.
But perhaps Noah is right, this debate may no longer be productive.
Best regards,
EDIT: In light of Professor Kalai new evidences, I would like to withdraw the word "faster" from my original post. Perhaps a better choice would be "closed without much opposition". Please accept my apology.
Long
FYI in a comment Doron Z. wrote:
Using the Maple package PARTITIONS, soon to be posted in a joint work with Andrew Sills, typing restart: read PARTITIONS: t0:=time():qmn(60,10^10000): time()-t0; gave 3.121 seconds. If you want to actually see the 589838-digit integer, ending in 71918678375357 it took 3.932 seconds.
This appears improvement to his other comment:
Shalosh can do it in two seconds once it found the quasi-polynomial expression for p_60(n), and it found it in 400 seconds. So Shalosh does first symbol-crunching then number-crunching. -Doron Z.
Note that the first timing is for 10^10000 while the OQ is for 10^100.
So was this whole thing a publicity exercise for new software? May MO be used for such things in the future?
I hesitate to say "I told you so," but...
Delete?
To put it mildly, this seems excessive to me! And, it is hard to imagine for me that this would be discussed if the question would have been asked by sombody not well-known (with whose views some people here seem to have a problem).
I would invite everybody who thinks about deleting this question, first to check the list of question sorted by votes and have a look at the end what type of things stay undeleted on this site, and second, and more importantly, to read the question and its answers/comments and to see whether some interesting content accumulated or not.
ADDED: One more point to note, Doron Zeilberger was now (actually already to days ago, not sure why just now this discussions needs to restart) answering in a comment a question asked in a comment by Gil Kalai. To me this makes all insinuations about self-promotion even more strange than they would be no matter what.
I'm disappointed. I'd have thought that DZ was up to something more interesting than software advertisement. To add insult to injury, he doesn't even explain the idea behind the program.
It's very important that MO not become a place for people to advertise their own results. (Ask some question, get attention, and then say "if you like this question you should read my new preprint which has the answer!")
I'm not sure if deleting is the right way to make that point though. It might be, but another option would be adding a section to the FAQ about not advertising (both by asking questions you know the answer to, and by bringing up your own work in situations where it's not relevant), and then editing DZ's question with a link to that FAQ entry.
I agree with everything Noah said.
With regard to "it is hard to imagine for me that this would be discussed if the question would have been asked by sombody not well-known (with whose views some people here seem to have a problem)." Yes, precisely. I'd bet a good sum of money that such a "question" by someone not so well-known would have been shut down, and perhaps deleted, with dispatch and with little to no discussion. The fact we are discussing this case at length actually betokens a measure of professional respect for DZ. (But I think I'm repeating myself here.)
Todd, well, I would consider to bet against this but it will be too hard to implement (but, look at, for example, the recent activity of user amine). In any case, this level of hostility (I do not mean you specifically) is rarely seen on this site. Some people here have a strange way to express their respect.
quid, I guess you really mean this question of amine: http://mathoverflow.net/questions/71113/ph-d-thesis-assessment. (I looked at a few others; they seem more or less normal to me except for a cross-posting, that apparently amine didn't realize was considered bad etiquette. He is, I guess, learning.)
I agree that case is borderline. Here are some differences I see: first, he didn't ask a question of the form "can you solve this problem: 'prove that...' " which I have seen posted by others, with the implication that OP knows how to solve it and is offering it up as a challenge -- this type of thing indeed gets closed very quickly. The question by amine was more a piece of asking for career advice, with little reference to the actual content of his thesis. As 'advertisement', I think it's pretty mild and unassuming.
Second, amine seems actually responsive to the issues that people have to some of his posts, both the PhD assessment one and the cross-posting one. I suspect this is what has irked a lot of people here: that DZ has refused to engage with anyone on issues of the social norms of this site and concerns about the form of the question. I believe, for reasons given by Noah, that there are real concerns here, and it's not hard to see why such resolute refusal to engage comes across as, frankly, pretty rude, or at least antisocial. (BTW: I've had brief email contact with DZ in the past about other things, and there he didn't come across as rude at all; in fact, he was very polite. So I'm trying not to draw any absolute conclusions here.)