TL;DR it's not about a HS dropout who learned math in a non-regular way, but about someone much smarter than average, who just didn't like 'bleeding edge math' but was okay with most of the stuff many people would consider 'hard math'
A Path Less Taken to the Peak of the Math World
21–30 of 51 posts
Re: A Path Less Taken to the Peak of the Math World
#22TL;DR it's not about a HS dropout who learned math in a non-regular way, but about someone much smarter than average, who just didn't like 'bleeding edge math' but was okay with most of the stuff many people would consider 'hard math'
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Re: A Path Less Taken to the Peak of the Math World
#23I think that the author is trying too hard to create sensationalism by stressing how the person in the article had decided that "math was not for him", by saying stuff like: After that bad math test in elementary school, Huh says he adopted a defensive attitude toward the subject: He didn’t think he was good at math, so he decided to regard it as a barren pursuit of one logically necessary statement piled atop anothe…
> Can someone explain how someone who has decided to distance himself from math can major in PHYSICS?!
And it takes a lot for an undergrad to take algebraic geometry class under a Fields Medal laureate. That gives a sight about his math maturity.
Re: A Path Less Taken to the Peak of the Math World
#24I think that the author is trying too hard to create sensationalism by stressing how the person in the article had decided that "math was not for him", by saying stuff like: After that bad math test in elementary school, Huh says he adopted a defensive attitude toward the subject: He didn’t think he was good at math, so he decided to regard it as a barren pursuit of one logically necessary statement piled atop anothe…
Can someone explain how someone who has decided to distance himself from math can major in PHYSICS?! The pure math world (and certain rarified branches of physics and CS) are quite different from the "measurement-based" sciences. If anything they're almost more similar to endeavors like musical composition (or even poetry) than any "lab-based" science. Particularly when it comes to the fetishization of "genius", "pur…
This is completely off. At the college level physics is almost completely math. Linear Algebra, Functional Analysis, and Abstract Algebra aren't exactly 'measurement-based' subjects.
Re: A Path Less Taken to the Peak of the Math World
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can someone explain how someone who has decided to distance himself from math can major in PHYSICS?! The pure math world (and certain rarified branches of physics and CS) are quite different from the "measurement-based" sciences. If anything they're almost more similar to endeavors like musical composition (or even poetry) than any "lab-based" science. Particularly when it comes to the fetishization of "genius", "pur…
This is completely off. At the college level physics is almost completely math. Linear Algebra, Functional Analysis, and Abstract Algebra aren't exactly 'measurement-based' subjects.
I've read that comment 3 times now. I think his/her point just didn't come across.
Re: A Path Less Taken to the Peak of the Math World
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can someone explain how someone who has decided to distance himself from math can major in PHYSICS?! The pure math world (and certain rarified branches of physics and CS) are quite different from the "measurement-based" sciences. If anything they're almost more similar to endeavors like musical composition (or even poetry) than any "lab-based" science. Particularly when it comes to the fetishization of "genius", "pur…
This is completely off. At the college level physics is almost completely math. Linear Algebra, Functional Analysis, and Abstract Algebra aren't exactly 'measurement-based' subjects.
Having majored in mathematics and music, and taken only undergraduate physics courses I would say my personal experience agrees with kafkaesq. I often thought maths was closer to English literature & composition classes or music composition classes than to my physics classes. For me, maths was definition focused like the difference between lightning and lightning bolt, big picture focused like writing a thesis argument or a composition, and detail focused similar to understanding how the structure of a sentence altered the affect of that sentence or detail focused when manipulating melodic lines or harmonies and rhythm within one measure of music (ie get through a harmonic progression to another key while still maintaining the set of rules/laws/constraints I had created for myself for a specific piece).
Re: A Path Less Taken to the Peak of the Math World
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can someone explain how someone who has decided to distance himself from math can major in PHYSICS?! The pure math world (and certain rarified branches of physics and CS) are quite different from the "measurement-based" sciences. If anything they're almost more similar to endeavors like musical composition (or even poetry) than any "lab-based" science. Particularly when it comes to the fetishization of "genius", "pur…
This is completely off. At the college level physics is almost completely math. Linear Algebra, Functional Analysis, and Abstract Algebra aren't exactly 'measurement-based' subjects.
Physics is about putting mathematical frameworks to use, pure math is about designing (or discovering) new frameworks.
Re: A Path Less Taken to the Peak of the Math World
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can someone explain how someone who has decided to distance himself from math can major in PHYSICS?! The pure math world (and certain rarified branches of physics and CS) are quite different from the "measurement-based" sciences. If anything they're almost more similar to endeavors like musical composition (or even poetry) than any "lab-based" science. Particularly when it comes to the fetishization of "genius", "pur…
This is completely off. At the college level physics is almost completely math. Linear Algebra, Functional Analysis, and Abstract Algebra aren't exactly 'measurement-based' subjects.
As a math student with lots of physics friends. Physics and math are very different.
One way to explain this might be that physics isn't about doing math, but using math to do computations. Meanwhile, math is about abstract ideas and rigorous proofs. Physics doesn't care about wondering if an integral is a well-defined concept, nor does it care about the real numbers being uncountable. Similarly, maths looks at the formulae in physics and thinks those things are way to complicated.
Our lin-alg course is joined physics and maths. The older physicists complain about all the proofs needed there. Mathematicians lament the lack of rigor in the same course.
Re: A Path Less Taken to the Peak of the Math World
#29I have noticed this in many mathematicians: they will start explaining you something that you are completely unable to grasp, being completely ignorant of the specifics of the field. However they will insist in their pursuit and the polite thing to do is to try to understand some general idea as best as you can, and they don't really expect you to understand everything that they are telling you. This has happened to…
I'm a mathematician. I can confirm that I do this.
Conversation would be so much more lively if the general population knew the basic results and definitions of maths. :p
I'd wax poetic about most reals being uncomputable, but good luck explaining cantor's diagonal theorem, measure theory, why we need measure theory, what a real number is, why we need real numbers, how sqrt(2) isn't rational, how numbers can be transcendental, what a limit is.
There is so much background needed for maths. People feel like they don't have the talent to get it, whereas really it's a matter of putting in the time to get comfortable with the basics.
Re: A Path Less Taken to the Peak of the Math World
#30Ed Witten, arguably one of the greatest mathematicians/physicists/mathematical physicists alive majored in liberal arts, worked for Nation and New Republic, enrolled in the economics PhD program at UW-Madison, before he switched to math!
Actually Ed Witten was not a total newbie to advanced Math before grad school.From his commemorative lecture:
At about age 11, I was presented with some relatively advanced math books. My father is a theoretical physicist and he introduced me to calculus. For a while, math was my passion. My parents, however, were reluctant to push me too far, too fast with math (as they saw it) and so it was a long time after that before I was exposed to any math that was really more advanced than basic cal culus. I am not sure in hindsight whether their attitude was best or not. However, the result was that for a number of years the math I was exposed to did not seem fundamentally new and challenging. It is hard to know to what extent this was a factor, but at any rate for a number of years my interest in math flagged.
https://www.sns.ias.edu/ckfinder/userfiles/files/Comemorativ...