Talk:George Pólya

Last Name
Is it worth mentioning that Jakab changed his name from Pollak to Polya 5 years before Gyorgy was born? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.33.206.96 (talk) 18:12, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Year mentioned in Pólya's four principles
Whoever copy&pasted this forgot to convert the references. What does (1957) stand for? How to Solve It is from 1945. Unsigned

It looks like someone may have been referring to the book How to Solve It and apparently used the year it was first reprinted. I see the kindle edition at Amazon is dated Nov 30, 1944 although it wasn't actually in print until 1945, and then reprinted several times, starting with 1957. If this is what the 1957 stands for I would also appreciate it as a --Dgroseth (talk) 21:04, 14 May 2009 (UTC)


 * This is apparently a reference to the second edition of How to Solve It (©1957 G. Polya). I do not know how significantly it differs from the first edition (©1945 Princeton University Press), but I can hardly imagine these ideas were not present in both. As far as I know, the only significant difference between the second edition and the current "Expanded edition" (2004, Princeton Science Library) is the addition of a foreword by John H. Conway. For a general summary of his principles I think distinguishing editions inline is superfluous. Mentioning the title at the top of the section and referencing a currently available edition should be adequate. ~ Ningauble (talk) 17:29, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
 * On second thought, perhaps the entire section would better be moved to the How to Solve It article, since it is essentially an overview of Part I §6–13 of the book. (It may be noted that he does not actually call these "four principles", but rather "main divisions" and "four phases" of the problem solving process.) ~ Ningauble (talk) 13:59, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

pi
''How I need a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy chapters involving quantum mechanics. (This is a mnemonic for the first fourteen digits of π, the lengths of the words are the digits)''

At the risk of quibbling, that's the first fifteen digits of π, including the first fourteen decimal places. (And the last digit is the same in this case whether rounded or truncated, which we perhaps should say.)

...but the point is to understand what you're doing, rather than to get the right answer... - Tom Lehrer, New Math.

Or am I missing something? I'll come back and fix it after a few days. Andrewa 21:41, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

It is the first fifteen digits so I changed it to read 'fifteen'. Logical, no? Mikekelly 16:31, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

The following page from wikiquote: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/English_mathematics_mnemonics attributes this mnemonic to Issac Assimov. Unless someone can find a citation, I think we should remove this from the list of quotes. Piyush Sriva (talk) 15:10, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Categories
"George Pólya's parents were Anna Deutsch and Jakab Pólya who were both Jewish." Obviously, that makes him ethnically Jewish.--20.138.246.89 10:39, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

There is no such thing as an "ethnic Jew", if that is a yes-or-no category. "Ethnicity" is a dicey word that people sometimes used to mean "race"; Judaism is not a race. If "ethnicity" is used properly, then it is a somewhat vague moniker for conglomerates of language and culture; it makes no sense to catalogue X or Y as being of the Z ethnicity (or not).

There is religion and there is status under Jewish law. Under the first criterion, Polya was not Jewish; under the latter he was. More importantly, Judaism was not a part of his background and formative experiences - his status in the eyes of the Nazis (yet another category) hit him only later. Bellbird 13:48, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Incorrect quote
I'm fairly sure the quote is meant to be If you can't solve a problem, then there is an easier problem you can't solve: find it. not If you can't solve a problem, then there is an easier problem you can solve: find it. I've changed in accordingly. See http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Polya.html (Alexwright 15:43, 22 February 2007 (UTC))

I just changed it again to "can solve", as I thought it was a mistake. I'll check next week in the book, to finally settle the matter! Tomixdf 18:11, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

The quote has been removed from this page, but I think it has found its way over to How to Solve It. I believe it is indeed "can't", and appears in this form in the forward of How to Solve It (2nd edition, 1973). I will correct it there. I believe that this quote is often misquoted ("can" might seem more natural). Flivni (talk) 23:49, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Another Award
SIAM established its George_Polya_Prize in 1969. ref --Billymac00 (talk) 04:09, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I added this and the similarly named LMS award to the article. ~ Ningauble (talk) 13:35, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Reference
Someone with permission needs to make a Digital Object Identifier for the reference to Pólya, Problem Solving, and Education. I am only able to show the url http://www.jstor.org/stable/2690409. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.43.206.144 (talk) 16:19, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Polya lecturer
is that an official term ? --79.239.53.164 (talk) 11:37, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Intro
The introduction gives the impression that Polya was merely an expositor (not true at all). 78.182.84.254 (talk) 14:45, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

A list of publications?
It'll take a while, but it would be really nice to at least start a section for his numerous journal publications.

Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.59.151.61 (talk) 20:07, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Name
Should we change the title to his adopted name Polya (without the accented o)? I guess he changed it when he moved to Stanford, as his books all use the unaccented form. John Wheater (talk) 17:18, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Have a look at his signature / autograph and you'll see that he wrote Pólya throughout his lifetime. --217.226.68.189 (talk) 13:51, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

Publications
The English translation of Mathematik und plausibles Schliesse was publisched more than 40 years before the supposed German original? Looking up the Brirkhäuser edition it seems to published in first 1961 (1988 being the 3rd edition) but that is still after the English publication of 1954. This seems to suggest that there is either an older German publication which should be listed here rather than the Birkhäuser edition one or the English is acually the original and no translation at at all.--Kmhkmh (talk) 08:54, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Can't speak for this particular case but I have known publications where the first publication is a translation from a manuscript. An example would be Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations which existed at his death as a manuscript in German was translated and published in English in 1953 and only later published in the original German. It should be made clear what is happening (for instance it is possible that Polya wrote both versions).  --Erp (talk) 06:27, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes since Polya was fluent in German he might have written both versions. However without further knowledge it is unclear in which language he might have wrote the first manuscript and what was translated by who and when. So without knowing I'd suggest not to speak of translations but rather English and German edition with their first known publication date.--Kmhkmh (talk) 09:18, 10 July 2019 (UTC)