Undergraduate Upends a 40-Year-Old Data Science Conjecture

Re:Undergraduate Upends a 40-Year-Old Data Science Conjecture by fragmede on Tuesday February 11, 2025 @02:09AM (#43009872)

I'd argue this is an argument against purely peer review, as her peers also weren't mathematicians.

Some of us when learning calculus wonder if we'd been alive before it was invented, if we'd be smart enough to invent it. Dr. Tai provably was. (the trapezoid rule, anyway) So I choose to say xkcd 1053 to her, rather than bullying her for not knowing advanced math.

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Re:Undergraduate Upends a 40-Year-Old Data Science Conjecture by eru on Tuesday February 11, 2025 @08:02AM (#43012275)

> Dr. Tai provably was.

No, we have no proof of that. We just know that she published a paper explaining the trapezoidal rule.

(A) That approximation for 'nice' curves was known long before calculus. Calculus is about doing this in the limit (or with infinitesimals or whatever) and also wondering about mathematical niceties, and also some things about integration. (B) I'm fairly certain she would have had a bit of calculus at some point in her education, even if she remembered it badly enough, to think she found something new.

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Re:Undergraduate Upends a 40-Year-Old Data Science Conjecture by fragmede on Wednesday February 12, 2025 @05:17AM (#43023846)

I mean, it's possible she reinvented the wheel because what she really needed in her life is for the math department to laugh at her, but that seems far fetched to me.

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