Hibert
July 30th, 2008 by WaltI have just learned from multiple Google searches that a) apparently I think Hilbert is spelled Hibert (with no l), but b) Google is smart enough to correct me. Next year I’m letting Google do my taxes.
I have just learned from multiple Google searches that a) apparently I think Hilbert is spelled Hibert (with no l), but b) Google is smart enough to correct me. Next year I’m letting Google do my taxes.
July 30th, 2008 at 10:52 am
If google knows the correct spelling that means many people have spelled Hilbert with Hibert.
The worst spelling error possible is the new search engine
cuil.com
if spelled like this
culi.com
get to a NSFW site. really bad considering me is currently in BNL…
July 30th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
I had a fleeting suspicion that Google was tailoring its results to your previous math-related searches, because when I tried “hibert,” Google asked if I meant “hibbert,” and also returned a lot of people named Hibert… Oliver, Spencer, Amanda, et al. The Sage of Göttingen was nowhere in sight.
But of course you probably searched for “David Hibert,” and that produces “David Hilbert” for googlers of all persuasions.
July 30th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
I once did a search on Kronecker. The search engine (not google) connected me with tensor products, a manufacturer of lamps. The result was the first case of a search engine making a pun. Yet, I have not been able to reproduce it since then.
July 30th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
I tried it again. If I just say “Hibert”, it goes for “hibbert”. If I do a longer search, like “Hibert space”, it corrects it as Hilbert. So it must use context from the search string itself. Either that, or Google realized we were onto it and returned the “hibbert” suggestion to throw us off.
July 31st, 2008 at 2:15 am
Google has no problems with me entering “hibert”, apparantly there is a (sort of) well-known blogger with that name. We must have spoiled the engine with all our searches for Hibert.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:04 am
http://old-wizard.com/top10math2.htm
Top 10 Mathematicians of All Time
Being the nerds that we are, it was only a matter of time before Old-Wizard released a Top 10 Mathematicians of all time list. The only question would be what criteria we would use when determining the order of the list. Would it be based on the volume of the mathematician’s contributions to the mathematical community? If so, Euler would be the obvious choice for the number one mathematician of all time. Or, would we base the list on the significance of the mathematicians’ “discoveries”? If so, Newton would dominate our list. Or, what if we based our list on the originality of the mathematician’s ideas? Well, if we did that, It would be hard to argue against making Cantor our number one mathematician of all time. In the end, we decided not to use any one of these criteria exclusively, instead, we choose a combination of all three of these to decide our list. All three were considered equally, and the results may or not surprise you, depending on your mathematical disposition. So, without any further adieu, we present the Old-Wizard.com Top Ten Mathematicians of All Time List:
10. Augustin Cauchy
9. Kurt Godel
8. Srinivasa Ramanujan
7. Henri Poincare
6. George Cantor
5. Gottfried Wilhelm Riemann
4. Leonhard Euler
3. Sir Isaac Newton
2. Archimedes of Syracuse
1. Carl Fredrich Gauss
JVP: see also
The Thirty Greatest Mathematicians
Thirty Greatest Mathematicians of All Time … Instead of a Top Thirty list, you can take the top names and make a Top Ten, Top Fifteen, Top Twenty, or Top …
james.fabpedigree.com/mathmen.htm
July 31st, 2008 at 9:32 am
It is easy to see that Google knows all the questions asked — they can simply keep a record of all the searches made using their search engine. But Google also know all the answers — or a good approximation to them — because they can see which link you click on in the list of links you receive from Google in reply to a search. So, if lots of people making google queries of “Hibert” then end their clicking on a page with “Hilbert”, or, if lots of people follow a query of “Hibert” with one for “Hilbert”, then google is clever enough to infer that “Hilbert” is most likely a preferred version of “Hibert”.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:06 am
“google is clever enough” modulo a weak Turing Test.
August 1st, 2008 at 11:19 am
Well, Jonathan, this inference is one that most children and perhaps even a large number of otherwise-successful adult humans could not do, so I think “clever” is exactly the correct word for describing Google’s ability here.