[HN Gopher] I found Katherine Johnson's calculations at NASA [vi...
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I found Katherine Johnson's calculations at NASA [video]
Author : mindcrime
Score : 89 points
Date : 2022-05-23 16:21 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| avgcorrection wrote:
| "Actual" is such a weird word. From the title it sounds like it
| is going to contrast what people _think_ is this person 's work
| with what they _actually_ did. Maybe to make a point that they
| did less work themselves than people assume or think. But it
| seems that "actual" in this case means that they wrote down the
| calculations on the paper that the video author has in their
| hands. (I 'm gonna assume that this is the original pamphlet and
| not a copy, of course.)
| kupopuffs wrote:
| I think it makes it sound cool, like this is ACTUALLY her work,
| awesome!
| gameswithgo wrote:
| mindcrime wrote:
| I think the "actual" here means something like "in contrast to
| the movie Hidden Figures, which gives only a superficial view
| of what Katherine Johnson actually did". So instead of a few
| minutes in a movie with some equations scribbled on a
| blackboard, this is the actual work in context.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Thanks. That makes sense.
| dang wrote:
| We've actually taken it out of the title above now.
| TedShiller wrote:
| This work was done by a team of people. This is commonly
| misattributed to a single person.
| [deleted]
| yucky wrote:
| Similar to the "Hidden Figures" mythology from Hollywood?
| jonnybgood wrote:
| What are you referencing? The paper in the video has two
| authors. Johnson's name wasn't going to be on it. Initially, it
| was going to be misattributed to one person who was not
| Johnson.
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| For flagrantly political reasons.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| You don't seem to understand the history of the time. There
| are two names on the report. There was very little, if any,
| political support at that time for giving her "extra" credit.
| The more likely scenario is that she should have been first
| author. That sort of thing happened a lot.
| causi wrote:
| I believe they meant misattributed in modern media, not
| while she was working.
| [deleted]
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| You're right, I was thinking of a different case. Should
| have read the article before commenting
| interblag wrote:
| Out of curiousity, have you looked at the paper or read the
| Forbes article linked in one of the other top-level comments? (
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/kionasmith/2018/08/30/katherine...
| )
|
| The paper itself has only two listed authors - that's also
| visible in the linked YouTube video and in the paper itself
| here: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19980227091
|
| Further, the Forbes article has a quote from the paper's other
| author:
|
| > [the other author] told [their boss], 'Katherine should
| finish the report, she's done most of the work anyway.'
|
| With that in mind, I don't think it's a stretch to refer to
| this as her calculations, even though I'm sure Ted Skopinski
| (the other author) made significant contributions as well.
| readams wrote:
| An article that discusses attribution for the paper:
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/kionasmith/2018/08/30/katherine...
|
| 'As Johnson later recalled, "Finally, Ted told him, 'Katherine
| should finish the report, she's done most of the work anyway.' So
| Ted left Pearson with no choice; I finished the report and my
| name went on it, and that was the first time a woman in our
| division had her name on something."'
| mindcrime wrote:
| Link to the paper at NASA's NTRS:
|
| https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19980227091
| curiousgal wrote:
| Thanks, the tone of voice in the video was very reminiscent of
| those ASMR videos which I abhor.
| mindcrime wrote:
| Yeah, I've often wondered if that's her normal speaking
| voice, or if she adopts that particular tone just for her
| videos.
| noizejoy wrote:
| I also wonder what the correlation might be, between such
| "wondering" about somebody's speaking voice and the gender
| of the speaker.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| Right. If you've ever thought somebody sounded weird it's
| because you're a biggot/racist/sexist/homophobe/other-
| insult-here and it definitely could not possibly be that
| the person just sounded a bit strange to you.
| noizejoy wrote:
| It's less about the thinking and more about the
| unfiltered blurting out such (when they are personal
| and/or unkind) thoughts in public.
| curiousgal wrote:
| The funny part is that I'm a woman myself haha I guess
| I'm a misogynist!
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| Internalized oppression!
| noizejoy wrote:
| In my own experience (and being male), I've found myself
| compelled to remind women team members not to be more
| critical (and/or less forgiving) of each other than they
| are of male colleagues. Because it happened somewhat
| regularly.
| mindcrime wrote:
| I don't know. I can off-hand think of exactly two
| Youtubers that I am familiar with, who frequently get
| comments about how their voice would make good ASMR
| audio, etc. One is male (the guy from Far North Bushcraft
| and Survival) and the other is female (Tibees). _shrug_
| noizejoy wrote:
| This parent comment didn't seem to be an obvious
| complimentary comment, like the one's you're referencing.
| mattofak wrote:
| While the work itself is interesting, I'm also super curious to
| know how this was typeset. Did NASA have special typewriters
| with common math symbols, or go through some office with a
| Linotype or early digital typesetter, or something else?
| tlb wrote:
| IBM Selectrics had a symbol ball [] you could swap for the
| standard one. It only takes a few seconds to change balls,
| though when I've seen people doing it they would normally
| type all the prose on a page, then go back and type all the
| math. Super/subscripts were done by rolling the paper up and
| down half a line. The big symbols like the square root were
| done later with pen and a ruler. Working from a handwritten
| manuscript, of course.
|
| [] https://www.duxburysystems.org/downloads/library/texas/app
| le...
| Fwirt wrote:
| There were some interesting Selectric balls, e.g. one
| specifically for writing APL! One of my CS professors wrote
| his dissertation on something to do with APL and had a copy
| of the manuscript and an APL type ball that he liked to
| show off.
| Finnucane wrote:
| The Selectric came out in 1961, after this paper.
| greggsy wrote:
| I was wondering the same, until I realised that typewriters
| were presumably also sold in Greece.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| There were typewriters with math symbols:
|
| https://www.mrmrsvintagetypewriters.com/products/hermes-3000.
| ..
|
| Notably, Dijkstra used a modified Hermes with a mixture of
| different type bars to get the output he wanted in his
| earlier EWDs.
| wrs wrote:
| In addition to Selectric symbol balls, you could use a
| "normal" typewriter with a set of extra symbols on tiny
| plastic sticks. You would place the symbol head on the stick
| in the way of the typewriter's strike.
|
| I found a Math Overflow thread full of stories about this:
| https://mathoverflow.net/questions/19930/writing-papers-
| in-p...
|
| And see page 7 of this for pictures:
| https://etconline.org/backissues/ETC099.pdf
| drfuchs wrote:
| Indeed, pre-TeX, Phyllis Winkler prepared all of Knuth's
| papers using TYPIT sticks for all the math symbols.
| Unfortunately, I didn't nab her typewriter and TYPIT box
| after her retirement, but here's a good set of photos and
| explanation: https://twitter.com/mwichary/status/1098850604
| 640755712?lang...
|
| Also, a TYPIT advertisement on the bottom left of the third
| page of https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumbe
| r=6500767
| mindcrime wrote:
| Heh, that's a really interesting question. It's easy to
| forget that not everybody lived in the world of PC's running
| TeX / LaTeX, and Postscript enabled laser printers, etc. I
| have no idea how math got typeset back in those days... I'm
| too young to have any appreciation for that era in that
| regard.
| [deleted]
| bombcar wrote:
| TeX was specifically written because Knuth was unhappy when
| his books went from being delicately hand-set by someone to
| being produced by a computer.
| jhfdbkofdchk wrote:
| I don't know how NASA did it, but in the 60s and 70s the IBM
| Selectric typewriters had those replaceable balls and you
| could swap one in with special math symbols on it.
|
| https://www.duxburysystems.org/downloads/library/texas/apple.
| ..
|
| https://mathoverflow.net/questions/19930/writing-papers-
| in-p...
| [deleted]
| reactspa wrote:
| > Johnson showed strong mathematical abilities from an early age.
| Because Greenbrier County did not offer public schooling for
| African-American students past the eighth grade... [1]
|
| The struggle is real.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Johnson#Early_life
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