• @glimse
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    512 hours ago

    Very interesting read despite not knowing any advanced maths.

    So my question(s) to mathematicians is: What does knowing these connections do for the field? What kind of things will this lead to? Feel free to speculate or give examples of other seemingly-small math discoveries that led to modern technology!

    I don’t mean that dismissively, I just don’t understand why this is so important because the implications are beyond my skillset

    • @[email protected]
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      812 hours ago

      Number Theory, the field where Ramanujam had bigger impact, used to be pure mathematics, with no expected use and basically a hobby for mathematicians, is the base of modern encryption and without it the internet as we know it couldn’t exist.

      • @glimse
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        210 hours ago

        Interesting! Do you have any guesses as to what sort of applications partition identities might see?

        • @[email protected]
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          29 hours ago

          I’m an actuarie, so I’m thinking in an insurance related way it could they have some use. Imagine a re insurance contract (the insurance that insurance companies buy to protect themselves) that pay after an S = sum Xi value of cumulative claims is reached (i = 1, 2, 3… number of claims, X = value of each claim) . How many ways can S be reached, given that they are N claims, with variable X?

          For example, S = 4, that value can be reached by X = 4, X1= 3 + X2 = 1, and so on. Knowing the number of ways you can reach that S value, can help you with the pricing of the contract, or forecasting to when the S value is going to be reached.

          Other than that, they are distributed computer power, if you need S computer power, how many ways can this value be reached knowing that you have access to N GPUs each one with Xi capacity.

          • @glimse
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            18 hours ago

            Very interesting example with the insurance but it was your second idea that really brought it home for me. Thanks for elaborating!