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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 13th, 2023

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  • on a side note, I notice this passage in the review:

    Wolfram refers incessantly to his ā€œdiscoveryā€ that simple rules can produce complex results. Now, the word ā€œdiscoveryā€ here is legitimate, but only in a special sense. When I took pre-calculus in high school, I came up with a method for solving systems of linear equations, independent of my textbook and my teacher: I discovered it. My teacher, more patient than I would be with adolescent arrogance, gently informed me that it was a standard technique, in any book on linear algebra, called ā€œreduction to Jordan normal formā€, after the man who discovered it in the 1800s. Wolfram discovered simple rules producing complexity in just the same way that I discovered Jordan normal form.

    this is certainly mistaken. I think the author or teacher must have meant RREF or something to that effect, not Jordan normal form