June 27, 2008
Taylor Series - a matter of life or death
A story about Igor Tamm, the father of tokamak method of controlled thermonuclear fusion:
During the Russian revolution, the mathematical physicist Igor Tamm was seized by anti-communist vigilantes at a village near Odessa where he had gone to barter for food. They suspected he was an anti-Ukranian communist agitator and dragged him off to their leader.
Asked what he did for a living he said that he was a mathematician. The sceptical gang-leader began to finger the bullets and grenades slung around his neck. "All right", he said, "calculate the error when the Taylor series approximation of a function is truncated after n terms. Do this and you will go free; fail and you will be shot". Tamm slowly calculated the answer in the dust with his quivering finger. When he had finished the bandit cast his eye over the answer and waved him on his way.
Posted by Robin Varghese at 01:31 AM | Permalink
Comments
The error bound on a taylor series is the n+1th term with some value k plugged in... not that hard.
Posted by: Jack | Jun 27, 2008 12:32:18 PM
Jack would be dead.
Posted by: Uzair | Jun 27, 2008 12:46:27 PM
> Jack would be dead.
because he doesn't speak russian? ;)
Posted by: Roberto | Jun 27, 2008 12:52:21 PM
where |k| < 1. I omitted that
Posted by: Jack | Jun 27, 2008 1:37:09 PM
who is jack? jack is dead baby, jack is dead
Posted by: boxer | Jun 27, 2008 4:00:24 PM
Jack would be dead if the bandit leader was a complete prat. Jack's attempt to answer the question would show that he was familiar with the form but had made a simple error. The bandit leader would then be faced with a problem. Is Jack a real mathematician (he did hand in an answer, which was incorrect and then added that the problem wasn't that hard; such a show of arrogance is the mark of a true mathematician) or is he just a poorly briefed spy? The bandit cheif is within his rights to shoot Jack but I think there's some wiggle room here.
Posted by: Pete Chapman | Jun 27, 2008 5:21:34 PM
Jack would be dead if the bandit leader was a complete prat. Jack's attempt to answer the question would show that he was familiar with the form but had made a simple error. The bandit leader would then be faced with a problem. Is Jack a real mathematician (he did hand in an answer, which was incorrect and then added that the problem wasn't that hard; such a show of arrogance is the mark of a true mathematician) or is he just a poorly briefed spy? The bandit cheif is within his rights to shoot Jack but I think there's some wiggle room here.
Posted by: Pete Chapman | Jun 27, 2008 5:22:35 PM
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