Reddit and What I Found There

Phillips, Kevin "Vote Comment Submit" 10/31/2015 via Pixabay Public Domain Distribution License

Unlike Twitter, I am well versed in Reddit, but I never really used Reddit solely for educational purposes (I usually go on Reddit to look up cute pet photos and internet memes at one in the morning on a weekday night and I can't fall asleep). Either way, I looked up two controversies in the math subreddit.

What kinds of things do people in the Reddit forums seem to be arguing about, debating, disagreeing about or otherwise engaging in meaningful exchanges of ideas about? 

Much like twitter, the posts that I found on Reddit didn't have many conflicts, but many exchanges of information instead. Nearly all of the posts I found the math subreddit are interesting bits of mathematical news and information, and there were nearly no posts about certain controversies that seemed of a higher importance. Some examples of these types of posts include an NFL player being accepted into the Math PhD program at MIT, a guide on how to use mathematics to win popular games, a derivation of Schrodiger's Equation, and other links of the same caliber. The math subreddit seems more suited to an information sharing site, much like how twitter was set up.

In your opinion, what are the two most interesting debates/disagreements you found in the Reddit forums? 

I did manage to find disagreements within the math community on Reddit, but not as articles. Disagreements and exchanges happen within the comments of each post, since every mathematician has their own perspective on how numbers are supposed to work with the world as a whole.

A New Proof of Euclid's Theorem and the comments

For those of you who are unfamiliar, Euclid's Theorem is a proof to the idea that there are infinite prime numbers that exist (meaning that certain properties of number can continue on until infinity). The article is another proof written by a mathematician by the name of Filip Saidak, sued as another way of explaining this characteristic. In this case, people in the comment section are debating with one another whether this proof better explains the phenomenon of infinite prime numbers of not. The two sides that seemed to form were that Euclid's timeless explanation was more simple and intricate, while the other side sees Saidak's explanation as a better way to explain why this characteristic. I found this argument interesting because both sides respect both theorem as correct, but are instead debating which definition is the best for explaining the situation as a whole.

Conway's Soldiers solved... with infinite moves and the comments

Conway's Soldiers, also known as Peg Solitaire, is a board game in which there is a board filled with pegs, and each turn you may only move one peg at a time, up to two spaces in any direction. A peg my only move if it jumps over another peg. The objective  is to get a peg as far up the board as possible.

This article refers to a theory that if an infinitely large peg solitaire board exists in all directions, there is a surefire way to reach row 5 with these pegs in least amount of turns. Details aside, the algorithm looks very solid, much like how certain algorithms exist on How to Solve a Rubik's Cube. The people in the comment section, however, are very torn about this explanation. Many people believe that this is not the most efficient way to move the pegs forward. An example a comment point out is a potential misuse of induction, a way to prove that every move can be precisely followed by the next in this context, since the formula starts from the end result and works back to the beginning (a big no no in math). Of course, other people say otherwise, talking about other concepts in which this concept can be used.

Overall, what impression do you get of your discipline based on what you saw happening in the Reddit forums? Were the people in those forums talking in ways you expected or did not expect, about things you anticipated they'd be talking about or things you had no idea they'd be discussing?

Considering the experience I had with Twitter, this time I was not surprised to see the same type of atmosphere in Reddit. People were more interested in sharing their opinions on math rather than arguing about them. The thing about math is that a majority of the concepts can only be explained in the abstract, meaning that the cannot seemingly exist, but if they did, mathematicians would be correct in their characteristics and properties. As with many human beings, I think it would be a tad difficult to argue about something that doesn't exist, so that's why I think that the community is so easy come, easy go when it comes to the posts on Reddit. They came to learn about math, not to argue, a very different atmosphere then what I predicted to see before I started researching.