Comments on: Fostering creativity by relinquishing the obvious http://conal.net/blog/posts/fostering-creativity-by-relinquishing-the-obvious Inspirations & experiments, mainly about denotative/functional programming in Haskell Sat, 26 Sep 2020 21:06:12 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.17 By: Conal Elliott » Blog Archive » Can functional programming be liberated from the von Neumann paradigm? http://conal.net/blog/posts/fostering-creativity-by-relinquishing-the-obvious#comment-329 Tue, 05 Jan 2010 18:40:25 +0000 http://conal.net/blog/?p=78#comment-329 […] is a person actively resisting their opportunity to discover of new possibilities — too stuck in the obvious to discover new […]

]]> By: Conal Elliott » Blog Archive » Communication, curiosity, and personal style http://conal.net/blog/posts/fostering-creativity-by-relinquishing-the-obvious#comment-328 Mon, 04 Jan 2010 07:12:06 +0000 http://conal.net/blog/?p=78#comment-328 […] hence some peevishness in some remarks in my previous post, Why program with continuous time?. See Fostering creativity by relinquishing the obvious for related […]

]]> By: conal http://conal.net/blog/posts/fostering-creativity-by-relinquishing-the-obvious#comment-327 Fri, 06 Feb 2009 00:04:29 +0000 http://conal.net/blog/?p=78#comment-327

“Obvious” to a mathematician is any problem that they have previously solved. ;)

Yes — even when their (our) solution is fallacious.

Moreover, and returning to the post topic (fostering or stifling creativity), our ways of thinking about a “solved” problem can become so obvious as to leave no room for valuable new perspectives.

]]> By: Edward Kmett http://conal.net/blog/posts/fostering-creativity-by-relinquishing-the-obvious#comment-326 Thu, 05 Feb 2009 22:44:56 +0000 http://conal.net/blog/?p=78#comment-326 “Obvious” to a mathematician is any problem that they have previously solved. ;)

]]> By: Reid http://conal.net/blog/posts/fostering-creativity-by-relinquishing-the-obvious#comment-325 Sat, 31 Jan 2009 17:28:13 +0000 http://conal.net/blog/?p=78#comment-325 On the flip side, when grading proofs on math exams, I reliably find that “It is obvious that X” really means “I don’t know how to prove X, but I hope it’s true.” :)

]]> By: Peter Verswyvelen http://conal.net/blog/posts/fostering-creativity-by-relinquishing-the-obvious#comment-324 Wed, 28 Jan 2009 23:32:57 +0000 http://conal.net/blog/?p=78#comment-324 LOL. This reminds me of some of our math professors at the university. Whenever they said “this is trivial” they most likely didn’t mean http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trivial_(mathematics), but they meant “this is obvious”. But when trying to crack these obvious proofs at home, the devil was always in the details. Nothing is obvious to me…And the bottom line is: obviously obvious is not obvious ;-)

]]> By: Paul http://conal.net/blog/posts/fostering-creativity-by-relinquishing-the-obvious#comment-323 Mon, 26 Jan 2009 09:02:00 +0000 http://conal.net/blog/?p=78#comment-323 Bravo!

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