In an attempt to encourage more people to actually do awesome things (a la instrumental rationality), I am proposing a new monthly thread (can be changed to bi-weekly, should that be demanded). Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to comment on this thread explaining the most awesome thing you've done this month. You may be as blatantly proud of you self as you feel. You may unabashedly consider yourself the coolest freaking person ever because of that awesome thing you're dying to tell everyone about. This is the place to do just that.
Remember, however, that this isn't any kind of progress thread. Nor is it any kind of proposal thread.This thread is solely for people to talk about the awesomest thing they've done all month. not will do. not are working on. have already done. This is to cultivate an environment of object level productivity rather than meta-productivity methods.
So, what's the coolest thing you've done this month?
I'm a high school senior. I co-authored a paper with John Conway. It's on pretty unimportant stuff, and hardly serious mathematics, but it's still interesting. And I get an Erdos number of 2!
Yeah just three weeks ago. The proofs are all complete and the guy in charge of writing it up should almost be finished. It'll probably take some time to get published though. I met Conway at a maths summer camp in Germany, and he told us students about the Prague clock problem. A friend, a grad student volunteering there, and I worked on the problem for a few days and pretty much solved it, and Conway said we should write a paper together. I was incredibly lucky, of course. Recreational mathematics isn't how one expects to get an Erdos number. It was a wonderful experience, and John Conway is an amazing man. I've never seen anyone that could delight so much in almost trivial mathematics. Kinda explains how he became great.