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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

#161

Post by justinpombrio »

Balgair wrote: post #92
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…

Chiming in from Bio: Yep, this is true here too. I can't find the citations right now, but there was a recent study done through Elsiver's website. The group got a hold of the servers for Elsiver and took a look at page views. They wanted to know what the rates of papers being read was. It was... disheartening. They found that ~46% (again, not sure here as I can't find the source) of papers will never be looked at ou…

In CS, most authors host "preprint" copies of their papers on their own website, and most views are of those versions. So I wouldn't be surprised if Elsiver's defunct distribution system isn't getting used much (at least in this field).

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#162

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#163

Post by gowld »

wbl wrote: post #141
maverick_iceman wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In math we have lots of journals devoted to recreational and more elementary problems. There is a lot of low hanging fruit out there. For instance, compute the fibbonacci numbers modulo the square of a prime and compare to modulo a prime. Are there numbers where the first zero appears at the same point? We don't know. I'm not saying the problem is easy. I'm saying one can make some progress without much theory.

> I'm saying one can make some progress without much theory.

Claimed without evidence.

Sure, you can make trivial progress by writing a computer program to search, and the problem is "elementary", but "elementary" doesn't mean "can be solved without studying lots of techniques and theories", it means "can be solved without calculus"

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#164

Post by gowld »

RandomInteger4 wrote: post #147
sametmax wrote: post #104

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 i…

Maybe people good at math are actually great at people skills and you're just repeating a bias spread by a banality driven media.

Or maybe sametmax has met dozens of mathematicians and made an informed summary.

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#165

Post by Balgair »

justinpombrio wrote: post #161
Balgair wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chiming in from Bio: Yep, this is true here too. I can't find the citations right now, but there was a recent study done through Elsiver's website. The group got a hold of the servers for Elsiver and took a look at page views. They wanted to know what the rates of papers being read was. It was... disheartening. They found that ~46% (again, not sure here as I can't find the source) of papers will never be looked at ou…

In CS, most authors host "preprint" copies of their papers on their own website, and most views are of those versions. So I wouldn't be surprised if Elsiver's defunct distribution system isn't getting used much (at least in this field).

Yes, but roughly half of all papers will never even be page-loaded from the 'official' source (if you believe my recollection). I am not a CS researcher, but I would imagine that of 10 people that cite a paper, at least one will bother to download the original paper or look up the source. Hell, even 'vanity' page-views of your own work would have been counted in the paper that I mentioned, and that is with many authors on a single paper too.

I honestly don't know what to make of it really. I at least bother to look at my papers once, if only to show my family on the Holidays, and I have a lot of so-authors that may be doing the same. Are most researchers so fed-up with their own work as to not even bother looking at it again? What is going through their minds concerning their efforts? It's just ... heartbreaking. At least half of researchers don't seem to care at all, not even the people that put all that time and effort to get their research out there. Like, what are we doing with our lives?

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#166

Post by Balgair »

FabHK wrote: post #111
Obi_Juan_Kenobi wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC a lot of that has to do with spammy 'publication mill' journals. If you just look at 'decent' journals, the situation doesn't look nearly as dire.

Elsevier is a despicable firm, but their journals are hardly publication mills, so not sure that response holds water.

Yes, Elsevier is far from a journal mill designed to H-index hack your way up the credential ladder. They are scum, yes, but they are at least truthful.

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#168

Post by jayajay »

Balgair wrote: post #92
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…

Chiming in from Bio: Yep, this is true here too. I can't find the citations right now, but there was a recent study done through Elsiver's website. The group got a hold of the servers for Elsiver and took a look at page views. They wanted to know what the rates of papers being read was. It was... disheartening. They found that ~46% (again, not sure here as I can't find the source) of papers will never be looked at ou…

> "lecturing the void"

This seems, at first, to be a problem in academia, but, at further glance, is really a problem with education.

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#169

Post by KennyCason »

I was recently explaining to a group the radiance of learning math for many years. It is really hard to convey the beauty that you see in things after years of studying math/logic. That amazing feeling through your mind when you solve something new. I can sometimes only best describe it as a lens that allows you to sense a previously imperceivable part of the universe and self. I can't even imagine walking around without this lens. Perhaps that sounds a bit hyperbolic or mystical, but this is my feeling.

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#170

Post by dbcurtis »

primodemus wrote: post #3

Francis is a great lecturer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqEyWLGvvdw&list=PL04BA7A9EB...

Francis Su is a great person. I've had the privilege of meeting him and having a couple of quality conversations with him. He is (or at least used to be) a regular part of the faculty at the MathPath camp, a summer camp for 11-14 year old kids. My daughter absolutely loved that camp, and attended for three years. Su taught some very fun sessions there that my daughter (now college freshman) still talks about. (BTW I highly recommend the camp.)

I found it amusing that the article referred to Harvey Mudd as a "liberal arts" college. I think of it as a butt-kicking engineering school.

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