Maths on alper.nl

Tue, 13 Oct 2026 09:52:58 +0200

Dan Abramov’s account of how he used LLMs to do novel math is interesting and revealing. It is possible to deploy these tools to do new and original things, but right now it takes a lot of time, persistence and expertise.

https://overreacted.io/how-i-vibed-a-proof-of-conways-conjecture/

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 19:22:09 +0200

After the way OpenAI behaved here with this math proof, I don’t see how anybody would trust them with secret information. It feels like we haven’t seen the last of this issue yet.

https://cims.nyu.edu/~tristanb/statement.pdf

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 00:02:36 +0200

“My expectation is surely in 20 years we are going to see AI tools generating mathematics that in many measurable ways are better than every human mathematician,” Litt said. “I would be shocked if that doesn’t happen.”

But as Venkatesh told me, “In the end, there are infinitely many ways to formulate any piece of math.” The choices we make, he said, are governed by human values and shaped by the fact that mathematics is not only a science but also an art.

I’m not sure there’s a real debate against AI anymore after advances like the ones we’ve seen in mathematics happened.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-ai-revolution-in-math-has-arrived-20260413/

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 21:52:25 +0200

The value of real skills is going up day by day for those of us who have them.

Learning things is hard but that’s the whole reason people go to universities. Nobody needs a university education to ask Claude to do their work for them.

https://www.dailycal.org/news/campus/academics/failing-grades-soar-as-professors-see-greater-ai-usage-dwindling-math-skills-in-uc-berkeley/article_16fad0bf-02cb-4b8c-8d88-888ffd9f8608.html

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 13:29:15 +0100

“This amazing snippet of code was languishing in the docs of dead software, which in turn the original formula was scrawled away in a math textbook from the 60s.”

LLMs digging up forgotten approximation algorithms to make raytracing faster.

https://16bpp.net/blog/post/faster-asin-was-hiding-in-plain-sight/

Mon, 22 Dec 2025 00:08:37 +0000

Do you want some flashbacks to the horrors of trigonometry? Here’s fizz buzz in cosines.

I inadvertently picked an area of software engineering that was pretty much exclusively trig and Fourrier transforms. Even back then I really liked formal systems and proofs a lot but for some reason that’s not where I ended up.

https://susam.net/fizz-buzz-with-cosines.html

Sat, 25 Oct 2025 10:08:13 +0000

Good to have explained this explicitly why mathematics is such an essential component of programming. People without an inclination for this kind of abstract mathematical thinking often are poor and chaotic programmers.

https://the-nerve-blog.ghost.io/to-be-a-better-programmer-write-little-proofs-in-your-head

Tue, 21 Oct 2025 16:51:14 +0000

Visual explanations of mathematical concepts are nice if they work. Here’s one such explanation of functional optics which is almost kinda accessible.

https://marcosh.github.io/post/2025/10/07/the-mondrian-introduction-to-functional-optics.html

Wed, 06 Aug 2025 05:52:35 +0000

A very cool and simple introduction into Lean and what makes it interesting. I’m not sure exactly what draws people in this direction but it’s cool to see the progress that’s being made here.

https://overreacted.io/the-math-is-haunted

Fri, 25 Jul 2025 22:08:47 +0000

Solvers are very annoying to setup and plug your problem into if you’re using them regularly. That’s why hooking them into LLMs to do the annoying manipulation work is an amazing idea.

This has the potential to entirely evaporate a vast class of quite complex problems.

https://www.stephendiehl.com/posts/smt_and_mcp_solvers