Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Cantor's diagonal argument in Tamil!

I consider Cantor's diagonal argument to be one of the most ingenious and beautiful methods of proof that humans have ever employed. I still remember the feeling of shock and awe that we were all struck with when Prof.Srinath completed explaining the proof in just a few minutes. It took sometime for the feeling to sink in.

While I was creating and editing all sorts of articles in Tamil Wikipedia including on topics like Brownian motion (), Colostrum (), Medical ultrasonography (), Venpa (), Colour blindness (), etc., the most satisfying (but possibly the least useful article without enough background material) was Cantor's diagonal argument in Tamil. Having learnt all my science and mathematics through the English medium, I found it hard to translate several technical terms into Tamil. Thankfully, there was a very comprehensive online dictionary from English to Tamil. Later, I also found that the Kerala state government has placed a number of their text books in several languages online, which were useful too. I don't know how useful these would be, but more accessible information won't hurt.

4 Comments:

Blogger Ananth Narayan said...

>I still remember the feeling of
>shock and awe that we were all
>struck with when Prof.Srinath completed explaining the proof in
>just a few minutes.

True. It is shockingly simple and elegant proof.
Maybe it was the simplicity of the proof that made the problem complex. ;-)

February 08, 2006 11:52 am  
Blogger Praveer said...

When you're translating an article, the cost of purity is obscurity.

I'm sure more native Tamil speakers are aware of the Standard Technical Term in English than the equivallent in Tamil.

February 08, 2006 12:02 pm  
Blogger Sundar said...

When you're translating an article, the cost of purity is obscurity.
True.
I'm sure more native Tamil speakers are aware of the Standard Technical Term in English than the equivallent in Tamil.
Not sure of the general population, which may know neither as these technical terms are not common use terms. In any case, more accesible information won't hurt as I said in the post.

February 08, 2006 12:16 pm  
Blogger Ambar said...

Ditto.

February 10, 2006 3:55 pm  

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