Comment by hgibbs

I made a public bet with Norman in early 2020 (late Feb) about whether the university we were at would hold classes until the end of the term (he believed they would not due to covid). Norman was the only one with the guts to publicly point out the obvious (anybody with the Wikipedia page for China case numbers and a spreadsheet could have figured out what was going to happen in late Feb). Among other things he was a great lecturer and a talented go player, although I never really thought that rational trig was worth all the effort - regular math seems to have plenty of utility even if you think it is built on shaky philosophical foundations.