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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

#121

Post by jerf »

FabHK wrote: post #118
jerf wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Would you say the same about exercising and sport? "There is really no point in doing any exercise unless you're aiming for Olympics level performance. Yes, it's somewhat harsh and intimidating. But there is no world where whoever just wants to can just go do sports and exercise what they want as long as they want, regardless of how well they do it." I think that was the point of the article - doing maths as a way of…

There isn't a world where you can just go do sports and exercise as long as you want, regardless of how well you do it. Eventually you're going to have to eat something.

I'm speaking in a context where we're talking about academic life and academic life being harder than it needs to be. I think that's the only way to read this context, because nobody is making self-study "harder than it needs to be", so reading this thread as being about "life in general" doesn't make any sense to me.

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#122

Post by FabHK »

kutkloon7 wrote: post #101
blurbleblurble wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is a wonderful book, "Visual Group Theory", that demonstrates this approach [1].

However, there are people who learn better algebraically than visually. So, combining different approaches would probably be optimal -- the problem currently is that often a very dry (and anti-historical) endless litany of definition, theorem, proof is taught.

[1] http://web.bentley.edu/empl/c/ncarter/vgt/

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#123

Post by FabHK »

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…

Many commenters here seem to be blind to that fact, but emphatically not Su.

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#124

Post by ghurtado »

bluebeard wrote: post #53
77pt77 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You ingratiate a working philosopher.

Ingratiate, that's a good word. Strangely opposed to the word ingrate.

Both come from the latin "Gratia" (favor), but you can thank the extremely ambiguous prefix "in" for the confusion. Depending on the word it can act both as "into" as well as "without".

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#125

Post by [deleted] »

maverick_iceman wrote: post #112
contravariant wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think pursuing a career in academia was what he had in mind when he said 'do mathematics'. In fact he said specifically: >Teaching mathematics shouldn’t be about sending everybody to a Ph.D. program. That’s a very narrow view of what it means to do mathematics.

Doing serious research level mathematics (or any other science for that matter) is almost impossible outside academia. Doing serious work is hard and mentally draining. Mere mortals can't motivate themselves to do it unless the incentives align just right (i.e. being in academia). Also it takes all your time so forget about it if you have another job. I know this from personal experience. After I joined industry I th…

[deleted]

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#126

Post by acqq »

king_panic wrote: post #73

Elementary math skills, which many of us reading and writing on Hacker News know, would change the lives of many millions of people in ways we take for granted.

"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI1C9DyIi_8

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#127

Post by drinkjuice »

eru wrote: post #72
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…

Alas in philosophy you can't even be properly wrong.

Of course you can, given a set of axioms. Hey, what does that remind me of..

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#128

Post by FabHK »

jerf wrote: post #121
FabHK wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you say the same about exercising and sport? "There is really no point in doing any exercise unless you're aiming for Olympics level performance. Yes, it's somewhat harsh and intimidating. But there is no world where whoever just wants to can just go do sports and exercise what they want as long as they want, regardless of how well they do it." I think that was the point of the article - doing maths as a way of…

There isn't a world where you can just go do sports and exercise as long as you want, regardless of how well you do it. Eventually you're going to have to eat something. I'm speaking in a context where we're talking about academic life and academic life being harder than it needs to be. I think that's the only way to read this context, because nobody is making self-study "harder than it needs to be", so reading this…

When you have a decent work-life balance, you can certainly engage in sport and exercise, even if it is not jour job.

I think the article is precisely not about professional mathematicians in academia. To quote: "If mathematics is a medium for human flourishing, it stands to reason that everyone should have a chance to participate in it." (my emphasis).

I solve Project Euler problems for fun. The article presents an argument that more people should do something similar, and more mathematicians and maths teachers should support it.

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#129

Post by kzisme »

cbsmith wrote: post #95
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…

Yeah, I'd argue a very un-Good Will Hunting thing: if you can be convinced you suck at math, you probably should not pursue a career in academia in math. However... being a math major is really different from a career in academia. People really should be encouraged to major in math.

I would have to agree with this, but I disagree with out math is taught by most schools.

Somewhere in this thread there is a link to Francis's lectures and they are wonderful. The method/enthusiasm be has for teaching is wonderful and makes all the difference to students.

Rather than going through online courses and paying for them (many university classes are mostly online math problems, and proctored during a specific time.)

EDIT: The way math is currently taught really forces people to dislike math and think they suck at it. (in general)

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#130

Post by FabHK »

jerf wrote: post #120
jgamman wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

If what you describe was even remotely the case, which I don't know, then there was some other filter in place preventing "everybody" from doing it. I can tell, because not "everybody" did. Plus I suspect you missed my "regardless of how well they do it" clause. I doubt that you can flunk every math class over and over and just keep attending. Loopholes that big get noticed, exploited, and closed very quickly.

In German universities in the 80's and 90's you had people studying for decades. It wasn't a "loophole", either, it was a feature. Universities were there to teach, basically everyone could go and study.

In recent times, the pressure to finish or drop out has increased, and studies have become more rigorously structured (or infantilised...), particularly with the introduction of the Bachelor/Master system.

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