Surely you’re joking. Polya pioneered so much combinatorics I don’t even know where to begin. Heck, a lot of counting problems reduces to polya’s enumeration theorem. The page of “references” to stuff named after him should be a clue to you.
Definitely. Whatever one may think of "How to Solve It," Polya was a renowned mathematician. The book is like the Richard Hamming lectures that often come up on HN: Great thoughts from a great mind but not easily applied by the average or even above average Joe.
Comments
Surely you’re joking. Polya pioneered so much combinatorics I don’t even know where to begin. Heck, a lot of counting problems reduces to polya’s enumeration theorem. The page of “references” to stuff named after him should be a clue to you.
Definitely. Whatever one may think of "How to Solve It," Polya was a renowned mathematician. The book is like the Richard Hamming lectures that often come up on HN: Great thoughts from a great mind but not easily applied by the average or even above average Joe.
Richard hamming lectures? I'd google, but I wouldn't know if I'd found the ones you meant.
Try https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35776480
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2FF649D0C4407B30
But besides combinatorics, what has he done for us lately? ;)
Luckily for the world, he dodged the 'startup craze' bullet ;) - by living before it started up :)