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by alderz 2174 days ago
Related to the "Every Mathematician Has Only a Few Tricks" point, there is a Mathoverflow question https://mathoverflow.net/questions/363119/every-mathematicia... that tries to list all of those tricks, which is pretty interesting.
1 comments

That quote about hating Erdos is interesting. I think my professor for UCLA undergraduate honors seminar from years ago, hated Erdos (he at least express dislike for a colleague of Erdos who operated similar). My impression is Erdos appeared to operated as something like a whirlwind of chaotic fact and theory finding whereas at least some other mathematicians aim to build larger unifying structures. It's a sort of Erdos versus Bourbaki divide (not to say who's right).