About bury talent in the ground
Absolutely real story. In the west, PR-schiki trumpeted it quite widely, but for the Russian-speaking audience it is practically unknown.
One day, a professor at an American university who taught discrete mathematics gave students a competitive challenge, promising some indulgence for interesting solutions.
The formulation of the problem was as follows.
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On the dish is a stack of pancakes of different diameters. It is required to sort it out so that the diameter decreases from bottom to top. In this case, it is allowed to use only one method: take a few pancakes from the top of the pile and, turning this pile over all the time, put it back.
Students were asked to investigate this task: to propose an optimal algorithm, estimate the average and worst cases, and so on. In general, approach the situation creatively. As the professor himself said later, he invented the task in a walking way and it seemed not too complicated and not too simple - in general, just for interested students.
The semester came to an end and the professor in one of the last lectures asked the question: who has something to boast about? To his surprise, no one wanted to brag. Only when the lecture was over, a lone student approached him and said something like the following: the task, they say, turned out to be much more difficult than it looked at first glance, and he, the student, has some thoughts, but they are not complete and he’s not even sure whether to submit them to the professor.
Delighted by this already, the professor assured the student that he was very interested and he needed to submit his ideas. A couple of days later the student brought him a small report.
After reading the report, the professor made sure that the task was indeed much more complicated than the originally intended one. He also had his own thoughts, which he shared with the student. Combining their efforts, they nevertheless advanced in the consideration of the problem and even published a joint article about it.
A year later, with a small professor at a conference, he met with a colleague from another state. A colleague in conversation recalled this article, commended her about it and asked about the student's further success - they say that he would take such a bright head to his magistracy.
The professor sighed sadly and said that this student had buried his talent in the ground. Say, he left mathematics classes, founded a software development firm, and gives all his free time and all his efforts to this firm ...
The student's name was William Gates, and his little company was called “Micro Soft” (then the name was also written separately). Do not believe? Catch the link to the article mentioned:
Gates, William ; Papadimitriou, Christos (1979). “ Bounds for sorting by prefix reversal ”. Discrete Math v.27: pp. 47–57. For links thanks track13 .
from here
One day, a professor at an American university who taught discrete mathematics gave students a competitive challenge, promising some indulgence for interesting solutions.
The formulation of the problem was as follows.
')
On the dish is a stack of pancakes of different diameters. It is required to sort it out so that the diameter decreases from bottom to top. In this case, it is allowed to use only one method: take a few pancakes from the top of the pile and, turning this pile over all the time, put it back.
Students were asked to investigate this task: to propose an optimal algorithm, estimate the average and worst cases, and so on. In general, approach the situation creatively. As the professor himself said later, he invented the task in a walking way and it seemed not too complicated and not too simple - in general, just for interested students.
The semester came to an end and the professor in one of the last lectures asked the question: who has something to boast about? To his surprise, no one wanted to brag. Only when the lecture was over, a lone student approached him and said something like the following: the task, they say, turned out to be much more difficult than it looked at first glance, and he, the student, has some thoughts, but they are not complete and he’s not even sure whether to submit them to the professor.
Delighted by this already, the professor assured the student that he was very interested and he needed to submit his ideas. A couple of days later the student brought him a small report.
After reading the report, the professor made sure that the task was indeed much more complicated than the originally intended one. He also had his own thoughts, which he shared with the student. Combining their efforts, they nevertheless advanced in the consideration of the problem and even published a joint article about it.
A year later, with a small professor at a conference, he met with a colleague from another state. A colleague in conversation recalled this article, commended her about it and asked about the student's further success - they say that he would take such a bright head to his magistracy.
The professor sighed sadly and said that this student had buried his talent in the ground. Say, he left mathematics classes, founded a software development firm, and gives all his free time and all his efforts to this firm ...
The student's name was William Gates, and his little company was called “Micro Soft” (then the name was also written separately). Do not believe? Catch the link to the article mentioned:
Gates, William ; Papadimitriou, Christos (1979). “ Bounds for sorting by prefix reversal ”. Discrete Math v.27: pp. 47–57. For links thanks track13 .
from here
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/22476/
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