I took Math 217 (Honors Linear Algebra) [1] with John Conway back in undergrad. Here are some anecdotes.
He announced that the midterm would be open notes. We study accordingly. We get to the midterm, and he is in California for a conference. A grad student is proctoring. We tell him that that the professor told us that it would be open notes. The grad student chuckles, says no way, the students outraged, and the exam proceeds closed notes. I guess he forgot to tell his grad student!
My friend comes to the exam late, didn't hear about the closed notes update, takes the exam open notes (how did his neighbor not notice?), turns himself into Conway later. The class average was something like 32 points out of 95.
After the midterm results, he was dismayed that he "had clearly done a poor job teaching us," and proceeded to spend the next 3 lectures going over the first 6 weeks of the course at a furious pace.
A classmate had met Conway back at a summer math camp during High School. John Conway had a real bicycle around his neck. He proclaimed that in the future if she sees a John Conway without a bicycle around his neck, that he is not the real John Conway! (much to our dismay he never came to class with a bicycle around his neck. I think he did, however, come to class with a metal cloths hanger around his neck. I think he did a trick involving one or more of these that day)
If students seemed a bit sleepy during lecture, he would routinely start to suddenly lecture at the top of his lungs. I definitely remember jumping up in my seat many times because of this. In one occasion, he opted to take off his shoe and throw it as hard as he could at the window for similar effect.
He would lecture and write on the blackboard so fast that we would copy the blackboard furiously for 90 minutes. If I started 2 blackboards behind (there were 6 boards), I would usually not have caught up by the end of lecture.
One time when I was wheeling my unicycle down the street this manic with a beard and sandals came after me and started asking some really odd questions. Turned out it was Conway and he'd recognised me from the maths common room, so figured I might be able to answer his questions. Turns out I did.
Subsequently I was one of very few people he'd bother playing backgammon with because we'd both play stupidly fast, and switch between extreme style of play, almost at random. I'd usually lose, but he stayed and played because he found it interesting. He's very like a cat, in that he'll play with something for a time, then completely lose interest and walk away without a word.
Fascinating, and humbling, to spend time with someone just so far out of my league.
Sadly, no, not in detail. I could fill in some answers, but I wouldn't be sure I wasn't making them up. I think it was about torque versus the power available at different parts of the cycle, but it might have been something completely different.
Knowing Conway, it probably was.
The thing about riding a unicycle is that you don't think of staying on top of it, you think about keeping it underneath you. Falling forwards? Pedal faster to bring it back under you. Falling backwards? Stop pedalling so you catch up. The side-to-side balance largely looks after itself when you're riding - it's different when you're idling.
But I'm not sure that's what he asked about. It was 31 years ago.
> The thing about riding a unicycle is that you don't think of staying on top of it, you think about keeping it underneath you. Falling forwards? Pedal faster to bring it back under you. Falling backwards? Stop pedalling so you catch up.
Sounds vaguely like track standing on a fixed gear. It's more like balancing a broom on your finger than trying to balance yourself on a rail.
I really love bikes of all varieties, but I've never messed with a unicycle. They seem fun. My friend has one; I'll have to try his sometime.
Reposting after a prod from the mods because there is so much fascinating stuff e.g. this quote from James Propp, professor of mathematics at the University of Massachusetts Lowell:
“Conway is the rare sort of mathematician whose ability to connect his pet mathematical interests makes one wonder if he isn’t, at some level, shaping mathematical reality and not just exploring it. The example of this that I know best is a connection he discovered between sphere packing and games. These were two separate areas of study that Conway had arrived at by two different paths. So there’s no reason for them to be linked. But somehow, through the force of his personality, and the intensity of his passion, he bent the mathematical universe to his will.”
> He’s invented many peculiar algorithms—for counting stairs while you climb without actually counting, and for how best to read through a stack of double-sided loose-leaf pages.
> His invention is simple. Your steps should be in a cycle: short, long, long. Long in this case means a double step. Thus, you will cover five stairs in one short-long-long cycle. In addition, you should always start the first cycle on the same foot. Suppose you start on the left foot, then after two cycles you are back on the left foot, having covered ten stairs. While you are walking the stairs in this way, it is clear where you are in the cycle. By the end of the staircase, you will know the number of stairs modulo ten. Usually there are not a lot of stairs in a staircase, so you can easily estimate the total if you know the last digit of that number.
I had the chance to meet him in person during a summer school a few years ago. He's simply awesome. Super fun guy, great to talk to and a great teacher (even though sometimes quite a bit disorganised... I remember him leaving behind some of his stuff when he had to catch the taxi that took him to the airport at 6am or so ;) ).
The best part of his teachings was probably sitting around in the commons area during the evenings and solving problems with him. Sure, his lectures were amazing, but the evenings were even better.
I met him while I was still at school, 1981 or 1982.
The maths department at my local University (Liverpool) organized meetings for kids from the surrounding region who were reasonably good at the subject, Conway came to one on a trip back to see his parents.
And the billions+ of entrenched synapses that compose the sum total of your life to date. You can not just rewire yourself in a heartbeat, and injunctions to "just do it" are as misleading as they are unhelpful.
You may will yourself to act in a different manner, but the will of a moment frequently exhausts itself, leaving the collection of rhythms and habits built into you over the years. Or, to put it differently, we all have an equilibrium, a norm we tends towards in the absence of persistent and sustained external stimuli. Your will is a small stimulus for change, and it works over weeks and months in a series of small nudges.
You can change, in almost any way, but if you "just will yourself to do it", you'll most likely find yourself failing again and again, convinced that if you could only be (somehow) just a bit more stronger-willed, complete change is right around the corner.
Perhaps you mean "Just do it – envision what you wish to become, work out the set of habits necessary to that new person, and slowly rework your present habits, one by one, (removing environmental triggers/cues to old habits, and redirecting their behavioral outcomes), until you've discarded or transformed the old set into the new.
Nothing is stopping you other than [a clear goal, a choice, and steadily repeated applications of] your own will."
You're agreeing with me. Yes, it's hard. So what if it's hard? It's a matter of second-by-second choices. Failed? ok, that's in the past. Might fail? ok, that's in the future. You're in the present. Just do it.
The narrative of this piece is really great -- that the most charismatic mathematician around just up and decided to reinvent himself as a charismatic person. I gained a bunch of weight a couple years ago, and I genuinely feel like a funnier, more gregarious person because of it. It's interesting to think about how much of your personality is really "you".
I met someone who did a similar reinvention. He said, "I used to be an introvert, and one day decided I would be the type of person who gives hugs." Up until then, I thought being introverted or extroverted was a fixed trait.
When I went away to college I made a conscious decision to meet people. I'm an introvert and, previous to then, was never the type to just go up and introduce myself to someone else. Ever since I went to college though I've been exactly that person. I'll happily meet someone else and get to know them.
I'm still an introvert but I didn't let that stand in my way.
He announced that the midterm would be open notes. We study accordingly. We get to the midterm, and he is in California for a conference. A grad student is proctoring. We tell him that that the professor told us that it would be open notes. The grad student chuckles, says no way, the students outraged, and the exam proceeds closed notes. I guess he forgot to tell his grad student!
My friend comes to the exam late, didn't hear about the closed notes update, takes the exam open notes (how did his neighbor not notice?), turns himself into Conway later. The class average was something like 32 points out of 95.
After the midterm results, he was dismayed that he "had clearly done a poor job teaching us," and proceeded to spend the next 3 lectures going over the first 6 weeks of the course at a furious pace.
A classmate had met Conway back at a summer math camp during High School. John Conway had a real bicycle around his neck. He proclaimed that in the future if she sees a John Conway without a bicycle around his neck, that he is not the real John Conway! (much to our dismay he never came to class with a bicycle around his neck. I think he did, however, come to class with a metal cloths hanger around his neck. I think he did a trick involving one or more of these that day)
If students seemed a bit sleepy during lecture, he would routinely start to suddenly lecture at the top of his lungs. I definitely remember jumping up in my seat many times because of this. In one occasion, he opted to take off his shoe and throw it as hard as he could at the window for similar effect.
He would lecture and write on the blackboard so fast that we would copy the blackboard furiously for 90 minutes. If I started 2 blackboards behind (there were 6 boards), I would usually not have caught up by the end of lecture.
[1] https://www.math.princeton.edu/undergraduate/course/mat217