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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

#171

Post by Frqy3 »

cderwin wrote: post #145
hutzlibu wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"EDIT: The way math is currently taught really forces people to dislike math and think they suck at it. (in general)" Starting in primary school with basic arithmetik. (I help a young boy with his homework) They don't really teach them Math, how to solve thing, they tech them to memorize different algorithms, which they can handle after a while, but don't know what they are doing at all ... So the best mathematicians…

I don't think this is true. Of course, most students do just memorize equations and follow orders. But in my experience the most successful students are always the ones who understand the material on a fundamental level and memorize very little (on some level, memorization is all but required by even the best).

The successful students do that in spite of the bad teaching. In my view, a lot more students would both enjoy and do better at maths with more appropriate teaching.

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#172

Post by tinalumfoil »

ianai wrote: post #155
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…

You could likely be linking an association with a trend. Maybe society treats people who have the personality requisite to study mathematics poorly. Thus, over time, both the individual and society 'negatively associate'. That was my experience, anyway, and I know it has been a historical trend. Some of the best mathematicians were bullied by their cultures, isolated, and thus had plenty of time to work on mathematic…

I don't think the suggestion of a "personality requisite to study math" supports the articles thesis.

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#173

Post by Frqy3 »

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.

A good example of this is Marjorie Rice, an amateur mathematician, who discovered four new types of tessellating polygons.

[0] https://mathtourist.blogspot.com.au/2010/06/tiling-with-pent...

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#174

Post by kakarot »

Balgair wrote: post #165
justinpombrio wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 autho…

We're just sitting here masturbating

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#175

Post by ZedDogX »

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…

The academic system is kind of broke; how are we going to fix it?

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#176

Post by tnecniv »

gthtjtkt wrote: post #36
xor1 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you expand on this? I'm curious what you mean. My only exposure to philosophy was an intro course in college.

The way I see it, most subjects in school focus on teaching you what to think. Philosophy focuses more on how to think. That's obviously not true in all cases (there are plenty of dogmatic philosophies) but in my opinion it's much more common for people to teach things like math, biology, history, etc. as a series of objective, memorized facts and formulas. Doing that with philosophy is far more difficult because so…

> Doing that with philosophy is far more difficult because so much of it is subjective and relies on criticism and analysis.

Any education in a topic worth it's salt should include that once you get passed the intro courses (because the intro courses are often necessary to provide context for your analysis). Whether curricula succeed in doing so, or students engage themselves enough to do so, is another matter.

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#177

Post by JamesBarney »

Balgair wrote: post #165
justinpombrio wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 autho…

To be fair most papers are written for readers that have the exact same viewpoint and specialty. So they are incredibly difficult to parse for people in the same field but a different sub specialty.

I think many more papers would be read if authors invested more time in learning how to write.

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#178

Post by dkarl »

hutzlibu wrote: post #133
kzisme wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 speci…

"EDIT: The way math is currently taught really forces people to dislike math and think they suck at it. (in general)" Starting in primary school with basic arithmetik. (I help a young boy with his homework) They don't really teach them Math, how to solve thing, they tech them to memorize different algorithms, which they can handle after a while, but don't know what they are doing at all ... So the best mathematicians…

I think this is true in some cases and not true in others.

I met a woman from South Korea who was taught all drill and no concepts. She was solving differential equations in high school but had no intuitive concept of derivative and integral or what they were used for. In fact, she had no interest in math. She was just a diligent student focused on getting into the top university. She was obviously trained the way you describe.

I have also personally, in the United States, been in math classes where many students suffered because they couldn't string together correct calculations consistently enough to validate and reward their high-level understanding. They learned a lot of the words and pictures, could explain what an integral was for, and could listen to a lecture and feel like they got it, but if you asked them to apply what they knew to a real problem, they responded with a kind of rueful helplessness. To them, mathematics was like magic in the Harry Potter universe: anybody could explain it, but it worked for some people and not for others, for reasons that seemed to them to be innate.

Each system stressed one aspect at the expense of the other, and in each system, there were many students who picked up both, but also many students who only learned the part that was stressed by their teachers. It was certainly the case in my classes that a student who only learned the concepts, without the mechanics, was unlikely to progress much farther in the math curriculum.

A balanced method treats the two aspects as complementary, each enabling the other. Treating one as the hero and the other as the villain might make sense locally as a response to a warped system, but it can easily become a warped approach in itself.

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#179

Post by nocoder »

Balgair wrote: post #166
FabHK wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe if Elsevier was open source & easily accessible more people would read it. I have tried reading many journal papers as a layman but in most cases got blocked by a pay wall. I dont like to rely on newspaper headline but like to go the source and because of paywall I get thwarted.

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#180

Post by fsloth »

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…

Isn't that plausibly the result of publish or perish? I would imagine it would lead to people publish at the cadence of their typing rate (to be cruel), not at the rate which they can generate good ideas.

Higgs said he could have not been able to operate in todays academia. Not everyone needs to have John von Neumann performance levels to do valuable work.

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