{"id":3310863,"date":"2006-02-14T13:55:00","date_gmt":"2006-02-14T13:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/2006\/02\/14\/Von-Neumann-and-Nobert\/"},"modified":"2007-11-26T03:37:44","modified_gmt":"2007-11-26T03:37:44","slug":"Von-Neumann-and-Nobert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/?p=3310863","title":{"rendered":"Von Neumann and Nobert"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='sustuff'>Stumbleupon <a href='http:\/\/horsewithnobunty.stumbleupon.com\/review\/3310863\/'>Review<\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p> <\/p>\n<ul>\n<p>Von Neumann and Nobert Weiner were both the subject of many dotty<br \/>\nprofessor stories.  Von Neumann supposedly had the habit of simply<br \/>\nwriting answers to homework assignments on the board (the method<br \/>\nof solution being, of course, obvious) when he was asked how to solve<br \/>\nproblems.  One time one of his students tried to get more helpful<br \/>\ninformation by asking if there was another way to solve the problem.<br \/>\nVon Neumann looked blank for a moment, thought, and then answered,<br \/>\n&#8220;Yes.&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Weiner was in fact very absent minded.  The following story is told<br \/>\nabout him:  When they moved from Cambridge to Newton his wife, knowing<br \/>\nthat he would be absolutely useless on the move, packed him off to<br \/>\nMIT while she directed the move.  Since she was certain that he would<br \/>\nforget that they had moved and where they had moved to, she wrote down<br \/>\nthe new address on a piece of paper, and gave it to him.  Naturally,<br \/>\nin the course of the day, an insight occurred to him. He reached in<br \/>\nhis pocket, found a piece of paper on which he furiously scribbled<br \/>\nsome notes, thought it over, decided there was a fallacy in his idea,<br \/>\nand threw the piece of paper away.  At the end of the day he went<br \/>\nhome (to the old address in Cambridge, of course).  When he got there<br \/>\nhe realized that they had moved, that he had no idea where they had<br \/>\nmoved to, and that the piece of paper with the address was long gone.<br \/>\nFortunately inspiration struck.  There was a young girl on the street<br \/>\nand he conceived the idea of asking her where he had moved to, saying,<br \/>\n&#8220;Excuse me, perhaps you know me.  I&#8217;m Norbert Weiner and we&#8217;ve just<br \/>\nmoved.  Would you know where we&#8217;ve moved to?&#8221;  To which the young<br \/>\ngirl replied, &#8220;Yes daddy, mommy thought you would forget.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The capper to the story is that I asked his daughter (the girl in<br \/>\nthe story) about the truth of the story, many years later.  She<br \/>\nsaid that it wasn&#8217;t quite true &#8212; that he never forgot who his<br \/>\nchildren were!  The rest of it, however, was pretty close to what<br \/>\nactually happened&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Richard Harter, Computer Corp. of America, Cambridge, MA<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stumbleupon Review Von Neumann and Nobert Weiner were both the subject of many dotty professor stories. Von Neumann supposedly had the habit of simply writing answers to homework assignments on the board (the method of solution being, of course, obvious) &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/?p=3310863\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":""},"categories":[1381],"tags":[400569],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3310863"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3310863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3310863\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3310863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3310863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3310863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}