Scientists on Reddit

James Grime

Mathematician and Numberphile presenter

u/JamesGrime ↗AMA only

How we know it's theirs

The 2014 r/IAmA AMA, posted from this account

We retrieved 1 post and 60 comments from u/JamesGrime, all from 2014, most often in r/IAmA.

Best moment

A redditor wrote in r/IAmA

On “I am James Grime, mathematician, Alan Turing fan, and numberphile. AMA!”

Why are you a mathematician? I'm always interested in how people became one or another thing in life :)

u/JamesGrime replied

The real answer to that is because I am lazy. And maths is the perfect subject for the lazy student. If you go to lectures you can do the coursework, if you can do the coursework you can do the…

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The real answer to that is because I am lazy. And maths is the perfect subject for the lazy student. If you go to lectures you can do the coursework, if you can do the coursework you can do the exam. There are no books to read and no essays to write. Perfect! And for me it was all games and puzzles, and that's not a bad life.

Excerpt

More moments

In a thread on r/IAmA

I am James Grime, mathematician, Alan Turing fan, and numberphile. AMA!

u/JamesGrime replied

I get asked this one a lot, and I will give you the real answer - I do not have a favourite number. (shock!) To me they are tools, and I have not anthropomorphised the numbers. Mathematicians do get asked…

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I get asked this one a lot, and I will give you the real answer - I do not have a favourite number. (shock!)

To me they are tools, and I have not anthropomorphised the numbers. Mathematicians do get asked this a lot and I think it's like asking an author "what's your favourite letter".

However, if you really want to put me on the spot, I'll say.... 1? Where would we be without the 1. In a semigroup, that's where.

A redditor wrote in r/IAmA

On “I am James Grime, mathematician, Alan Turing fan, and numberphile. AMA!”

I don't know much about Turing but I would like to hear more from you, especially as it seems you're wanting to talk about him!... So just just going off of one of your previous answers, can you tell us more about his work on mathematical biology? What part of it are you most…

u/JamesGrime replied

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If you don't know this it's pretty cool. Alan wanted to answer the question, why do Zebras have stripes, leopards have spots, cows have patches. He model the development of the pigmentation with mathematical equations similar to the equations that describe waves. He called it "waves on cows and waves on leopards". This is something he did in 1952, so after the war and a couple of years before his death. It is still a fundamental paper in mathematical biology.