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To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

quantamagazine.org

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Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#101

Post by kutkloon7 »

blurbleblurble wrote: post #65
Koshkin wrote: post #45

Well, mathematics is hard. It takes a lot of effort to really learn it, a lot of dedication and (self-)motivation. Not everyone can do it, and, frankly, very few people - even among those who have spent many years studying mathematics - could say that it is the best way to live your life.

I profoundly disagree. I believe that mathematics can be learned and appreciated by many, because mathematics is a language for articulating inner urges and perceptions that are common to a wide range of creatures, not only humans. This idea that mathematics is only for the few is self fulfilling, and perpetuated by narrow ideas of what it constitutes.

I agree. I think that mathematics is being teached the wrong way. Especially in the USA, the state of math education is absolutely terrible.

I suspect a more visual approach to be more useful than the classical textbook approach. It is true that a lot of textbooks do use pictures, but video's would help a lot, I think.

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#102

Post by drakenot »

andrewflnr wrote: post #98

Su seems almost blind to the fact that you can do math outside an academic environment. You don't need to go to school for math to experience truth, beauty, play, etc in the context of math. You can read books, play around with the results, read articles on places like Quanta. You probably won't discover new things this way, but it will enrich your life. If your goal is for math to make people's lives better, then as…

Su opened his talk with the story of Christopher, an inmate serving a long sentence for armed robbery who had begun to teach himself math from textbooks he had ordered. After seven years in prison, during which he studied algebra, trigonometry, geometry and calculus, he wrote to Su asking for advice on how to continue his work. After Su told this story, he asked the packed ballroom at the Marriott Marquis, his voice breaking: “When you think of who does mathematics, do you think of Christopher?”

It doesn't sound like he has that bias to me. He opens his talk speaking about someone who is a non-traditional student doing match outside an academic environment.

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#103

Post by jerf »

ndh2 wrote: post #85
110011 wrote: post #63

As a counterpoint to the overly exuberant article let me chime in as a graduating theoretical computer scientist. Math is hard and despite its beauty and allure academic life doesn't take place in a vacuum- ergo there's a lot of politics and pettiness from your peers. You should expect to invest years of your life into making progress on some hard problem with little encouragement in the meantime, this takes a tremen…

That's not a counterpoint, that is exactly the point. Maybe it becomes clearer if you read the speech. Math is hard, but it's being made much, much harder than it has to be.

What's the alternative? I mean that seriously, not sarcastically or in a defeatist way; try to explore what the alternative might actually be.

On the one hand, academia has become rather harsh and intimidating and there is room for all kinds of improvement.

On the other hand... there is no world where whoever just wants to study math can just go study whatever they want for as long as they want, regardless of how well they do it. Of course, when I spell it out, that probably seems obvious, but I suspect this may be the unexamined assumption in a lot of people's heads.

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#104

Post by sametmax »

The problem with this theory, is that it completely ignores that a lot of people good at math have poor people skills. And you need people to be happy and improve your life opportunities.

So yeah, math is beautiful, and if you like it, go for it.

But if you look for a skill to acquire or practice, your taste no withstanding, this may not be the best investment. Sport, social skills, languages, time management, self introspection and cooking are examples of things that usually pay off better than math in your life. It brings more people, opportunities, health, money, etc.

Again, not saying math is not a good thing to practice. We need math as a specie. And an individual may need it for his or her happiness. But as a strategy I don't think so.

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#106

Post by 110011 »

dalbasal wrote: post #96
110011 wrote: post #63

As a counterpoint to the overly exuberant article let me chime in as a graduating theoretical computer scientist. Math is hard and despite its beauty and allure academic life doesn't take place in a vacuum- ergo there's a lot of politics and pettiness from your peers. You should expect to invest years of your life into making progress on some hard problem with little encouragement in the meantime, this takes a tremen…

Leaving aside the politics and economics, what do you think a better feedback mechanism might look like?

Scientists actually spending more of their time reading others' work, communicating encouragingly and giving constructive criticism (anyone in academia has read more than a few hate filled reviews of their work), better pay (a postdoc at Oxford nets you a monthly salary after taxes of about 2.4k pounds), less focus on numbers and more on quality (a big reason why people don't read papers is because they're missing out on little by not doing so i.e., much of the work is incremental, unsurprising or just badly posed or ill motivated. instead focus must be given to quality and this must come from job hiring decisions which should reflect that science is not a numbers game, but the sad sad truth is it so very is). About the encouragement part, I felt let down many times by senior scientists by their uncaring and viciously competitive nature. All this does not need to be a part of academia. I think greater science can emerge after these structural problems are addressed. But currently the only people who rise to the top are the genuinely good ones and the ones who know how to game the numbers system. Idealists who come for the beauty of math often find themselves woefully unprepared to play all these other games in addition to doing good math.

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#107

Post by Stasis5001 »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #46
Stasis5001 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Math classes ramp up in a gradual way that develops critical thinking and intuition in a very small sandbox, where it's easier to appreciate the results. Thinking in, say, just the x-y plane makes it far easier to isolate relationships than philosophy, which tackles much bigger problems and gets you into controversial problems almost immediately, with no clear answers. The basic math framework is rigid and precise, w…

This seems like a poor curriculum rather than an actual flaw in philosophy, without the logic framework philosophy is just the history of ideas. If taught in a manner similar to math, where you learn logic tools and then build on top of them over time, I would expect similar and overlapping development.

A philosophy class teaching fundamentals in logic - taught in a way similar to math - is probably more like math in the sense of the article than philosophy in the sense of the grandparent post. The grandparent probably meant something more like a class on ethics, which doesn't really have the same style of beauty and truth that math does. This is certainly my impression after taking a few philosophy classes and a ton of math ones, including a philosophical logic class cross-listed with math.

This isn't a flaw of philosophy. Lots of fields of human study are great. Math just has some things that make it unique. But just like defining what art is, it's hard to pin down exactly what it all is.

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#108

Post by Nimitz14 »

gthtjtkt wrote: post #8

Based on all the supposed benefits of doing math, it sounds like people would be better off studying philosophy. Same benefits but a much broader appeal, and far more applicable to most people's everyday lives. When I finally "discovered" philosophy in college, I was angry that we hadn't been exposed to it at all in middle or high school. Instead, I'd been forced to waste years on things like math, biology, etc. that…

Philosophy is for people too stupid to do math.

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#109

Post by bpchaps »

searine wrote: post #89
cryoshon wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So the career path of a junior scientist is pretty crushing mentally this is true throughout the sciences. it's a big issue.

Do you think it's the culture of science or the inherent uncertainty? From my own experience I think it's the latter. Jumping off the edge of human knowledge and hoping there was a result to catch my fall was very mentally taxing. Not many other careers force you to grabble with the uncertainty of creating knowledge, and I think it takes a toll.

This has been my experience with trying to get a foothold in the technical civics communities, so I don't think it's either. I've found that the bar gets set pretty high by folks who are willing to speak loudly about their accomplishments in a ways that exaggerate the actual accomplishments. If you're not really good sales person towards your own work, you find yourself working significantly harder than what's probably needed since fewer people are willing to work with someone who hasn't had any accomplishments. It really sucks that ego and salesmanship gets in the way of trying to do civics work.

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#110

Post by jgamman »

jerf wrote: post #103
ndh2 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a counterpoint, that is exactly the point. Maybe it becomes clearer if you read the speech. Math is hard, but it's being made much, much harder than it has to be.

What's the alternative? I mean that seriously, not sarcastically or in a defeatist way; try to explore what the alternative might actually be. On the one hand, academia has become rather harsh and intimidating and there is room for all kinds of improvement. On the other hand... there is no world where whoever just wants to study math can just go study whatever they want for as long as they want, regardless of how wel…

"there is no world" - wasn't that what University was like before the 80s and still is in many other countries? minimal fees and some casual work and you can stay for as long as you can stand the conditions of the average student flat ;-) I think you are conflating the reality of your current culture with what was/is in other cultures.
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