How to Read Mathematics
There's a contrast between the comments here about Feynman, and the author's example of birthdays. The birthday data is totally random, and the author's assert this is the sort of thing mathematicians enjoy. It strikes me that Wolfram does this too, he'll demo something by saying "let's get some data" and then generate a big pile of random numbers.<p>I usually space out at that point. I understand the utility of it, but I find it worthless in most cases. I'd rather understand a concrete example well, then check my understanding by trying the random case, then try to think of some clever or experience based edge case or counterexample.<p>I think Feynman, especially later in life, probably had the gift of jumping straight to step 3: he understood that his most valuable contribution could often be simply expanding the space of possible examples. And random doesn't really get you the whole space, and certainly doesn't get you the interesting parts of the space.