Talk:Edward Kasner

Data about Milton Sirotta
I was reading this article about 'googol' and I found some confusing data about Milton Sirotta. In this article his birth is dated to 1911; however, on the other page of wiki the following text was found: "The term was coined in 1938[1] by 9-year-old Milton Sirotta (1929–1981), nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner. Kasner popularized the concept in his book Mathematics and the Imagination (1940)." I think 1929 is the correct one and I suggest you to fix the text. Best regards from Kohlasz (talk) 12:06, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Untitled
Kasner, in addition to inventing and popularising some silly names for numbers, was a mathematician who did research. Here are some places to start in learning about him:


 * |The Mathematics Genealogy Project - four of his students' names, theses, and students
 * |Generalized dynamical trajectories in space (Duke Math. J. 10 (1943), no. 4, 733–742) - some of his work, available from most college campuses; three of his articles published by Duke were cowritten with John De Cicco: a favorite student?
 * Wolfram's Mathworld, of course
 * |googol@everything2, which suggests the purpose of googol.

That's all I found that was interesting. Good luck.

Someone clean up this mess!
I have the feeling this article doesn't quite match the standards of other wikipedia articles. I would love to clean up this article myself, but I have no knowledge of mathematical history, let alone on Edward Kasner! Maybe someone could even just point out a good source to me, from which I can improve this article; if you don't agree with me on this article requiring a clean-up, tell me. As I was saying, it's just my opinion/feeling. vilem 20:55, 28 January 2007 (UTC)


 * What's wrong with the article? You're going to have to be more specific in your criticisms before making any changes. You have admitted having "no knowledge of mathematical history"; that seems to end this discussion.--Lance talk 21:09, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

First, noticing that an article is sub-standard needn't have anything to do with detailed knowledge of the subject's academic specialty (and usually doesn't). Secondly, it is in fact sub-standard in certain respects (English style, etc.), but I don't know if that's what vilem had in mind. Thirdly, your unexplained reverting of my edits, without even the courtesy of edit summaries, returned the plain falsehood that Kasner coined the term "Googol"; his own account makes clear that his nephew coined the term, and that he first used it in print. --Mel Etitis ( Talk ) 12:08, 12 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Your highly pedantic comments fail to improve the article. To assert Kasner's generosity of attribution to his nephew changes the fact that Kasner coined the term "googol" is patently silly; and calling it a "falsehood" demonstrates that your comments cannot be accepted as either encyclopedic or serious.--Lance talk 22:15, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I suggest that you first read WP:OR and WP:CITE (not to mention WP:NPA). then come back and we can discuss the matter sensibly. --Mel Etitis ( Talk ) 23:31, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

There must be an editing mistake in the start of the Google section: the phrase "Kasner is perhaps best to pique the interest of children" does not make sense (and is probably ungrammatical). Also, I very much doubt that the name Googleplex (Google's headquarters) was named after the Googolplex number. Note that you have no reference to prove this. It's more likely that it was created as a contamination of "Google" and "complex" (a word often used to refer to a set of buildings belonging together). Gvanrossum (talk) 17:47, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive http://www.webcitation.org/68ubHzYs7?url=http://graphics.stanford.edu/~dk/google_name_origin.html to http://graphics.stanford.edu/~dk/google_name_origin.html

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