User talk:Charles Matthews/About me
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- General questions should be written on my Talk page, not here
[edit] From my past
- You say:
My current interest is go (board game), but I've been adding material here from a previous existence as a mathematician, on a hobby basis.
- What previous existence as a mathematician? Are you interested in providing details?
I wrote a Ph.D. on Gauss sums in 1978 under Cassels in Cambridge, worked at IHES, Cambridge, Harvard, Cambridge again as a lecturer and Fellow of Queens' College. That took me up to 1988; I haven't worked as a mathematician since.
Charles Matthews 18:36 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- You don't consider that you're still working as a mathematician at the moment?? Sorry, I just get frustrated at the mathematics community that takes the position that "working as a mathematician" is synonymous with "doing a lifetime of mathematical research" (proving theorems, writing papers, attending conferences, etc.), as if educators, people who choose to work in industry, or people who write an occasional paper for fun and try to explain math to ordinary people, are somehow are less important than the (relative minority) who devote their lives to proving theorems. It's a strange profession that holds up an ideal for what it means to "belong", yet that ideal is only attained by a fraction of people. Revolver 20:23, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Actually I took a big break from mathematics - had enough of it, let's say - ten years ago; and it's only posting to WP that has really brought it all back for me (did do some sci.math a while ago). It worked out that I spent a decade on go, in various ways - and now I'm a bit saturated with it. Call me fickle ... anyway, wiki editing is something novel, and suits me as 'practice' for other writing, also. Let's not get into 'the mathematics community', here and now. It's a wholely remarkable subject, run in a profligate way in terms of talent. Charles Matthews 20:34, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- There's nothing wrong with being fickle! I hope you didn't take my comments personally, they weren't meant to express frustration with you in particular. I simply wanted to point out that math is strange in attaching such importance to research and academic tenure as part of the identity of being a mathematician -- biologists or chemists who work for drug companies are still considered biologists or chemists, and so on...but agreed about not getting into a discussion on this topic in general...maybe some other time. Revolver 00:14, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Game theory
Are you the same Charles Matthews who wrote an excellent (yet agonizingly brief) article on progress in combinatorial game theory entitled "CGT Becomes Hard Currency"?
Do you know of any well-written, thorough reviews of moderate length on combinatorial game theory published on the internet? I pinpointed an excellent review of game theory by Don Ross but its scope is too general to target my needs as I invent only perfect-information games (i.e., chess variants). All I can find are either entire books or short articles machine-gun-riddled with links.
-Derek Nalls
The same. The CGT people aren't great at getting the message out, in my semi-informed opinion. You could look at http://senseis.xmp.net/?CGTPath, which is work in progress, leading up to applications to go but not restricted to those. Are you aware of the theory about Konane? That's the most chess-like thing to come to mind (not a chess variant).
Charles Matthews 08:38, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I enjoyed the many math articles, many of which i found your involvement. Xah Lee 10:45, 2005 Apr 6 (UTC)
[edit] Request for arbitration and help
(a) I have been accused of "sockpuppetry". This is totally unjust. I am not the same as any ot the Wikipedia-editors to whom I have been linked. I seek an arbiter who will listen to reason and logic. Contributors named Bioinformaticist, M&M Peace (i think), Philly Student...they are not I, at all --I do not know who they are, I vow as if in court! (b) Why are articles (bios of living people) on Marion Cohen, Roberta Wenocur, Elaine Zanutto, Linda Zhao, and other female mathematicians being held to standards different from male mathematicians like Herbert Wilf, Dennis DeTurck, &c .? (c) What is the problem with the corp, Daniel H. Wagner Associates? (d) All right, maybe articles need improvement, but deletion? and some with prompt deletion? (e) Wikipedia should be fun, not so contentious.
Please help. I want to be nice, but it is difficult when being unjustly accused and bulliied.
I hope you are understanding, and believe me. I am not lying. This is the truth.
MathStatWoman 16:31, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
- I actually think that the comments I have looked at, on Marion Cohen, are generally reasonable. Charles Matthews 22:10, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
