beyond the book, what contributions did he make? it would seem like the techniques should have helped him solve problems but Wikipedia does not show anything else
Surely you’re joking. Polya pioneered so much combinatorics I don’t even know where to begin. Heck, a lot of counting problems reduces to polya’s enumeration theorem. The page of “references” to stuff named after him should be a clue to you.
Definitely. Whatever one may think of "How to Solve It," Polya was a renowned mathematician. The book is like the Richard Hamming lectures that often come up on HN: Great thoughts from a great mind but not easily applied by the average or even above average Joe.
Every so often there's a comment on here that's simultaneously so ignorant and so arrogant that it crosses from offensive to hilarious. Congrats, this one is up there with the likes of "it could just be rsync".
go look at the wikipedia page for george polya and tell me what state of mind you need to be in to conclude that he didn't accomplish anything outside of publishing that book.
also btw
>born in 1887
he lived very long and had a very long career so you're still not close
I am not exactly quoting anyone. So now that's settled, you can't use that as a dodge to get out of responding to the point.
> "I don't know how it's possible to "misread" a wiki"
Great, thanks for your informative contributions. Don't forget to be offended and accuse someone of ignorance and arrogance just because you don't understand. That's useful.
> "Still not close to any semblance of a convincing rebuke"
His death was still so long ago that more than half the population of Earth wasn't even born at the time.
