Do you know a young person?

[tpfto@mathstodon.xyz]

@dougmerritt the "ten thousand" thingie is from xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1053/

[dougmerritt@mathstodon.xyz]

@tpfto
Ah! Yes, I'd forgotten that one; thanks.

[icecolbeveridge@mathstodon.xyz]

@ColinTheMathmo Bill (12yo): "David Attenborough" (brief conversation about what you probably mean) "I know some world war two leaders: Churchill, Hitler, the Italian one... Mussolini? Probably all the kings and queens back to William the Conqueror." (I suggest science and music). "Marie Curie. Beethoven. Mozart." I'm sure he would go on for hours once he got going, he's watched/read a LOT of Horrible Histories.

[pigworker@types.pl]

@ColinTheMathmo I'm trying to remember where in my archives I put this puzzle, currently to no avail.

I can remember a few things on my list. It was basically Wikipedia bait. There was stuff like

• Euclid shows how to compute greatest common divisor
• Al-Khwarizmi shows how to solve quadratic equations by completing the square

but also sneaky things like

• Ada Lovelace writes programs for Babbage's Analytical Engine
• Babbage's Analytical Engine gets constructed
• Women in the UK get the right to vote

I'm fairly sure I had

• Alan Turing commits suicide
• Lethal quantities of toxic gas are released from Union Carbide factory in Bhopal
• King Charles I executed

I definitely had

• Potatoes arrive in Europe

because I would routinely demonstrate Euclid's algorithm with two piles of salad potatoes, claiming the while that Euclid had actually used potatoes, and never once getting called on the anachronism.

If I remember rightly, I served up a list of 25 things (selected from a slightly larger pool, but with some compulsories) in random order, each keyed by a letter of the alphabet, and I asked for the sequence of the key letters arranged in chronological order, with the one which hasn't happened yet at the end.

[colinthemathmo@mathstodon.xyz]

@pauamma It was somewhat tongue-in-cheek ... there isn't really, and can't be, a hard cut-off. I know people in their early 20s who were therefore born in the naughties ... "young" is a completely subjective term.

I was thinking of under 18, but really, anyone.

CC: @shapr

[icecolbeveridge@mathstodon.xyz]

@ColinTheMathmo Fred (11yo): (I asked for five or else he'd miss school): "Anne Frank, Charles Dickens, Jesus, John Snow, Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage (it feels wrong to have one without the other.)"

[colinthemathmo@mathstodon.xyz]

@Twotired Bit of both. It's hard for some to come up with names spontaneously, but prompting runs the risk of them vaguely thinking they may have heard the name.

I'm just interested to see what names come up ... it's not a challenge, it's data so I can mention names when I do talks and hope that a sizeable proportion of my audience will have a clue about who I'm referencing.

[lkundrak@metalhead.club]

@ColinTheMathmo asked a child

answer: ozzy osborne

*deep sigh*

[avtpiavva@mastodon.social]

@ColinTheMathmo asked my 12 year old. He said George Washington and a lot of the presidents, Jesus, lots of Kings and Queens of England, Pharaos, Leonardo Davinci, Mona Lisa (probably a celebrity since she was painted) Queen Elizabeth who was an adult before 1950, not sure about celebrities, the scientist who discovered uranium, a guy who discovered a bunch of bugs in the 50s, Shakespeare.

[colinthemathmo@mathstodon.xyz]

@avtpiavva Fabulous collection ... thank you!

And thank him!

[robinadams@mathstodon.xyz]

@ColinTheMathmo @Scmbradley My 6-year-old son knows Albert Einstein and Jesus. I will keep you posted on developments.

[colinthemathmo@mathstodon.xyz]

@robinadams Super ... thank you!

CC: @Scmbradley

[robinadams@mathstodon.xyz]

@ColinTheMathmo @Scmbradley Oh, and Dr Seuss and A A Milne

[colinthemathmo@mathstodon.xyz]

@robinadams

CC: @Scmbradley

[robjmills@indieweb.social]

@ColinTheMathmo define young… my 9 year old could name every single one of those. Largely this is from being obsessed with watching Horrible Histories though!

[colinthemathmo@mathstodon.xyz]

@robjmills It would be interesting to know if they know who comes before whom.

But the knowing of them is impressive ... HH has much to be proud of!

[wynke@mendeddrum.org]

@ColinTheMathmo She was not very interested in the question. She did ask how old her grandparents are/were and if they count (the oldest of them was born in 1940 and none of them are particularly famous, so no). Then she turned back to the more pressing matter of getting ready for her three-day school trip, which I guess is fair.

[colinthemathmo@mathstodon.xyz]

@wynke Totally fair.

[sunflowerinrain@mastodon.online]

@ColinTheMathmo
I was reading the lists (usually know the name, sometimes not what they were famous for oh hello Wikipedia), and saw a list of which I knew little. Ah! famous somewhere other than western Europe. My life is narrow.

My list would be heavy on musicians before 1900.

Do some people know of Old Masters because of turtles?
I suspect my sons think Donatello and Raphael were, though they'd know Leonardo and Michelangelo.

I'd heard of Babe Ruth, thought it was a chewy sweet.

[jonathan859@someplace.social]

@ColinTheMathmo Define young? And define famous, I'm a 17 yo german, Hitler comes to mind here first...