Professor Ma (1May 23, 939-65438+February 22, 2000) is a famous mathematician, computer scientist, linguist, educator and an outstanding science popularization worker in China. As a teenager, horses are very talented. He is very talented, accomplished in philosophy, music and literature, and knows many languages. 15 years old was admitted to the Department of Mathematics in Peking University. Although he didn't spend much time in professional classes, he got good grades, so he was known as a "mathematical prodigy". Later, he became a professor of mathematics at Peking University, with numerous peaches and plums. Professor Ma has a wide range of hobbies and is versatile. At the same time of teaching and scientific research, he served as the head coach of the 30th International Mathematical Olympiad in China, and achieved good results in the total score of the team and the total number of gold medals. The masterpiece "Wandering in the Mathematics Garden" won numerous awards and was well received by young readers.

Chinese name: Ma

Place of birth: Zaoqiang County, Hebei Province

Date of birth:1May 23, 939

Date of death: 65438+February 22, 2000

Occupation: scientist

Masterpiece: Walking in the Mathematics Garden

Title: Professor

outline

Professor Ma is a famous mathematician, computer scientist, linguist and educator in China, and also an outstanding science popularization worker. He has his unique methods in teaching and scientific research, and his pioneering, pioneering and forward-looking contributions in many fields have important theoretical significance far beyond the field itself.

In 1990s, Professor Ma lived abroad and was engaged in computer software application development. He died in Redwood City, California on February 22nd, 2000 at the age of 6 1.

The life of the character

Mahiwen

Professor Ma's masterpiece "A Walk in the Mathematics Garden" is a masterpiece of mathematics popular science that has been reprinted many times and won numerous awards. When we opened the book and read the first chapter "Counting Problem", we were deeply fascinated by how to estimate the number of fish in the pond. It is very different from what we know about mathematics. The new scenery in the book is dazzling, and every new place shows its extraordinary and wonderful. It was a deep shock, which made us feel that this thing called mathematics was really interesting!

This book is completely different from some of the contents of the math competition. Mathematics competition can improve my mathematics level and make me feel the pleasure of solving difficult problems, but it is difficult to arouse my interest in mathematics itself. The interesting questions in A Walk in the Mathematics Garden can stay in our hearts for a long time and stimulate readers' great interest in mathematics. This book contains a lot of advanced mathematics, especially mathematics related to information science, such as the basic knowledge of topology, a little graph theory, preliminary game theory, infinite discussion, simple mathematical logic and so on. Although they are very advanced in themselves and can be handwritten by Professor Ma, they can make children understand the true meaning. It can be seen that the content written by Professor Ma must be carefully selected, and it may be the most appropriate to tell junior children really interesting and meaningful mathematics.

Mathematics is not only a beautiful science, but also has great practical value. This book pays special attention to this point when writing, and the examples cited are all in real life, and there are even examples for reference. This article emphasizes that mathematics is a concrete thing, and its abstraction is only a manifestation. If you learn mathematics, you can only talk about Kan Kan's empty logic, then his mathematics is probably just a pile of rubbish. Those who can really learn mathematics well must be attracted by its beauty. Mathematics, which is generally widely used, must also belong to the beauty of mathematics.

Whether in primary school or junior high school, mathematics in textbooks is always simple and boring for some "better" students. I think it is necessary for students who have spare capacity to learn to watch more extracurricular things. Mathematics itself is more difficult, and it is difficult to go far on this road without interest, so reading something exciting, whether it is to understand or learn mathematics, is of endless benefit. Mathematics is a subject that everyone should study hard, but it is hard to say how much mathematical knowledge, let alone mathematical skills, a person will use in his future work. Learning mathematics is more important to learn some mathematical ideas. Scientific thinking helps to think about any problem. All this is not just reading textbooks and doing exercises.

Personality assessment

Professor Ma entered the Department of Mathematical Mechanics in Peking University in 1954 at the age of 15. In the year of graduation, he took part in the probability major. The excellent academic paper "Asymptotic Solution of Optimal Partition Problem (or Quantization Problem)" was published in the third issue of Journal of Mathematics 196 1. He was praised by Professor Ding as "one of the most talented students".

1959 stayed in school after graduation. I worked in the Probability Teaching and Research Section of the Department of Mathematical Mechanics, mainly studying information theory and coding theory. He opened the first mathematics information theory course in his department, and co-authored the lecture notes, rearranged the theoretical system of classical information theory, and proved many theorems in a clearer and easier way. These handouts are used by many students. During this period, he also studied the linguistic problems of Chinese from the point of view of information theory, and proposed that good results can be obtained by processing Chinese through four-level Markov chain. This method has been widely used since 1980s.

In the late 1960s, he was engaged in the research and popularization of experimental design, mainly studying orthogonal design and popularizing experimental design methods in Beijing Rubber General Factory. 198 1 published the monograph Mathematical Theory of Orthogonal Design, which mathematically summarized and sorted out many methods of modern experimental design, especially those of Taguchi School in Japan, and clarified the mathematical theoretical basis of some methods, which played a great role in the development of orthogonal design theory.

In 1970s, the software of drawing and reading spectrum was developed on the computer of Peking University 69 12. Engaged in theoretical research of computer science, the paper Tree Computer and Tree Program was published in the first issue of China chinese journal of computers. He is one of the first graduate tutors in the field of computer science in China.

1979- 198 1 As the first visiting scholars sent to the United States, he worked in the artificial intelligence laboratory of Stanford University led by Professor JohnMcCarthy, the founder of artificial intelligence. During this period, I have been engaged in the research of many topics, one of which is the paper "Relational Methods in Semantics" on procedural semantics.

After returning to China, he did a lot of excellent work in artificial intelligence. Is one of the founders in the field of artificial intelligence in China. He participated in the establishment of the Artificial Intelligence Group of China Computer Federation and China Artificial Intelligence Society, and founded the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in Beijing Computer Institute on 1982. Important achievements have been made in the study of "cognitive logic", and the papers published at 1983 international artificial intelligence conference were well received, so they were elected as members of the program Committee of 1985 international artificial intelligence conference. 1985 presided over the national natural science foundation project "LISP language dynamic compilation system". He played an important role in the establishment of the intelligent computer theme of China 863 Project. With profound insight, he pointed out that while computers have brought great influence to human society, they also have their inevitable limitations. He has written many articles for this purpose and has been promoting the development of artificial intelligence with clear ideas.

Professor Ma was a director of China Computer Federation and actively promoted the construction of theoretical computer science in China. From 65438 to 0983, as one of the main leaders, he established the Computer Research Institute in Peking University and held the first theoretical computer research class in China. 1984, participated in organizing the theoretical computer science branch of China Computer Federation and the first academic conference on theoretical computer science held in Guangzhou, and in the same year, opened a postgraduate course in theoretical computer science in Peking University, recruiting 10 graduate students. During this period, the doctoral program of theoretical computer science of Peking University was founded. 1987 contributed to the first academic conference of young computer workers. During this period, he deeply studied many problems of computer science theory, published a book "Programming" on the basis of course handouts, and published a long paper "Introduction to Theoretical Computer Science", which was revised and published in English in World Scientific Publishing Co. PTE Ltd., Singapore. His paper "What is Theoretical Computer Science" put forward many profound understandings.

Professor Ma has made great achievements in linguistics and is the first member of the State Language Committee. At the end of 1970s, his academic discussion with Mr. Zhu and other famous linguistics professors developed into a grammar discussion class that lasted for many years, attracting and edifying a group of new people and brewing some important achievements, including his own papers, such as the first article on the weakened form of the verb "le" published in the inaugural issue of China Language Journal. Later, he published many high-quality academic papers on Chinese grammar and Chinese function words in China Language and other publications, which were highly praised by China scholars. Proficient in English and Russian, dabbling in Albania, Mongolia, Japan, Germany, France, North Korea, Hausa, Swahili, Esperanto and other languages.

Professor Ma is one of the founders of computational linguistics in China. He devoted great enthusiasm to the combination of computer science and linguistics. 1983 opened the course of computational linguistics in Peking University, 1986 co-founded the Peking University Institute of Computational Linguistics with Professor Zhu, and presided over a series of interdisciplinary seminars on information science. Co-founded the Institute of Language Information Processing in beijing language and culture university, and directed research projects in the Institute of Software of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing Institute of Information Engineering, Heilongjiang University, ChinaSoft Corporation and other units, involving Chinese character input, text editing, machine translation, language understanding, automatic summarization, Chinese computer-aided teaching, etc., and personally designed algorithms and debugging programs. He wrote many articles about the relationship between these two disciplines, and enthusiastically prefaced his graduate works, encouraging the use of computer science to assist linguistic research.

With a sense of responsibility as a scientist, he attached great importance to the popularization of science and basic education. He used to be the head coach of China International Mathematical Olympiad, and led his team to participate in the 30th International Mathematical Olympiad held in Germany from 65438 to 0989, and achieved the best results in the team's total score and the total number of gold medals. He has written many popular science masterpieces, and organized and led the Chinese translation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Fantasy by Godel, Eisele and Bach. This translation was highly praised by the original author, and won the 4th National Award for Excellent Works of Popular Science in June, 20001.

In 1990s, Professor Ma lived abroad, engaged in computer software application development, and served as the company's chief scientist, holding a number of patents. He used to be the vice president of Peking University Alumni Association in Northern California, and actively contributed to domestic scientific research and education. He is enthusiastic about helping others and has great influence among Chinese and overseas Chinese.

Professor Ma has been engaged in teaching since he graduated from 19 years old, and there have been countless peaches and plums for decades. He offered many brand-new courses, and the handouts he used were the crystallization of his research experience. He has coached a batch of graduate students, and his academic thoughts and research methods have benefited them for life.

Professor Ma is indifferent to fame and fortune all his life, and does not seek fame and fortune. He opened the road blindly and didn't want to get it. He doesn't write famous books, but every article is full of words. He is responsive and willing to share his wisdom with others. He embodies a true scholar's demeanor.

catalogue

order

Counting problem

About the exam

Mathematics on the map

What is the area of Beijing?

Four-color theorem

If we live in Saturn's rings,

A Bridge to Chromatic Number —— Euler Formula

By-product of Four-color Problem —— Mobius Ring

Mathematics in the field of experiment

If you can't find a big venue,

Back to geometry.

The world of charts

Shortest path problem

Maximum flow problem

Please be the workshop director.

What is the secret?

Let's start with the simplest case.

What are "︶" and "⌒"

When moving forward,

Who should I follow?

The result of a battle of wits-found a balance point

Use mixed strategies to create a balance point.

Scout strategy

There are infinitely many strange things.

Countless wonderful functions

fuzzing mathematics

Impossible question

Waiting for people to explore.

Say goodbye to you.

Read a short paragraph:

What is the area of Beijing?

You can not only measure the distance, but also calculate the area on the map.

For example, a map of 1: 4000000; 1 cm on the map is equivalent to 40 km on the ground, that is, a 3 cm square on the map is equivalent to a 40 km square on the ground. That is 1 cm2 on the map, which is equivalent to 40x40 km2 on the ground = 1600 km2.

According to this truth; We need to know the area of Beijing, and we can calculate it by calculating the area of Beijing on the map.

However, the shape of Beijing on the map is not a simple geometric figure. How to calculate its area?

Find a transparent plastic plate or a piece of transparent paper, and point a row of points at regular intervals, such as every 1 cm, and the distance between points is also 1 cm. This neat "grid" is our tool.

If we want to calculate the area of a graph, we put the planting board on the graph and count how many grid points fall into the graph. What is the area of this number in square centimeters? This is a common method used by geologists.

There is an error in the area calculated by this method. You see, the grid points falling into the graph are always integers; And the area is probably not an integer. Area and grid are two quantities with different properties. For example, the graphics in Beijing are gradually enlarged, and its area will increase accordingly no matter how short the time is, so the area is a continuous quantity. This is not the case with grids. It is either the same or at least one more, so it is a discrete quantity. But within a certain error range; These two quantities with different properties can be substituted for each other.

The method of finding the area mentioned above is to replace the continuous quantity with discrete quantity. How big is the error in doing so? The error will not exceed the perimeter of the curve.