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Tuesday, April 08, 2003
 
I actually skipped class today. Aren't I a terrible person? I did have a good reason though. I went to go see Stephen Wolfram speak in Tech. When I got there at 10 to 4, the entire ower section of Ryan Auditorium was packed solid, so I wnnt upstairs and found a seat there. He talked for about 90 minutes on his book, explaioning some of the basic concepts behind it, and then went on to consider further applications of his theories, afterwhich he answered questions. I left at about 6, and he was still talking, but I unfortunately had an assignment to finish and another class to attend. Overall though, he was a really good speaker, and able to illustrate his theory very well, especially considering it is such a radical idea. I felt that even if you knew nothing about it going in, you could have gotten at least a basic idea of what he was saying and understood the basic idea behind it all (that the occurance of complexity can arise from something simple, to generalize incredibly). It was definitely worth skipping class to hear him speak, and it inspired me to read the last 700 pages of the book (of almost 1200 total).


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