Upvoted, even though I can’t really see the appeal to non-mathematicians.
I think you may have gotten beavers confused somewhat. The image I get from Zeilberger’s description is that beavers try and build algorithms to solve general problems. I don’t think plain computation is enough. I think of them more as birds that like algorithms instead of theorems.
It seems to me that Zeilberger wanted to say computational tools are important, but ended up saying that tool-builders are a distinct personality type. Whyyy? They’re kinda out of place in a discussion of mathematics. Okay, Mathematica was built by beavers. How about R? Python? Microsoft Excel? Researchers use all those :-)
Upvoted, even though I can’t really see the appeal to non-mathematicians.
So, I suspect that the bird/frog/beaver categories are relevant to intellectuals in general, not just to mathematicians; will have to say something about this in the introduction of my revised post.
I think you may have gotten beavers confused somewhat. The image I get from Zeilberger’s description is that beavers try and build algorithms to solve general problems. I don’t think plain computation is enough. I think of them more as birds that like algorithms instead of theorems.
I think that there’s a correlation between interest in algorithms and interest the activity of performing algorithms. Unfortunately, it’s hard to explain why I think this without giving examples from personal conversations. I’ll think about how to address your point.
Upvoted, even though I can’t really see the appeal to non-mathematicians.
I think you may have gotten beavers confused somewhat. The image I get from Zeilberger’s description is that beavers try and build algorithms to solve general problems. I don’t think plain computation is enough. I think of them more as birds that like algorithms instead of theorems.
It seems to me that Zeilberger wanted to say computational tools are important, but ended up saying that tool-builders are a distinct personality type. Whyyy? They’re kinda out of place in a discussion of mathematics. Okay, Mathematica was built by beavers. How about R? Python? Microsoft Excel? Researchers use all those :-)
Thanks for the feedback.
So, I suspect that the bird/frog/beaver categories are relevant to intellectuals in general, not just to mathematicians; will have to say something about this in the introduction of my revised post.
I think that there’s a correlation between interest in algorithms and interest the activity of performing algorithms. Unfortunately, it’s hard to explain why I think this without giving examples from personal conversations. I’ll think about how to address your point.