
Daniel Litt
@littmath
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Assistant professor (of mathematics) at the University of Toronto. Algebraic geometry, number theory, forever distracted and confused, etc. He/him.
Toronto, Ontario
Joined August 2010
@gregfloyd42069 My experience (both writing and reading) is that when one tries to communicate hard-won mathematical intuitions directly in text it ends up too vague/imprecise to be useful. The reason reading math papers is hard work isn't the style, it's that developing intuition is hard.
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It is indeed a bad, hard-to-read style. Its one redeeming feature is that it's better than anything else that's been tried.
The desiccated "Theorem, Lemma, Proof, Corollary,. " presentational style is staggeringly counterproductive, if one's objective is actually communicating the underlying mathematical intuitions and thought processes behind a result. In reality, the process is more like. (1/4).
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I think you should read self-reports of how much AI tools increase productivity with a LOT of skepticism.
We ran a randomized controlled trial to see how much AI coding tools speed up experienced open-source developers. The results surprised us: Developers thought they were 20% faster with AI tools, but they were actually 19% slower when they had access to AI than when they didn't.
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