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US Army applying new areas of math

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Re: US Army applying new areas of math

#81

Post by chucksmash »

austincheney wrote: post #58
noobermin wrote: post #44

To be very honest, count me in as one of these. I am someone who works for a gov't lab, but I do "very pure" scientific research. It's not that our research doesn't have "defense applications," it might eventually, but we are definitely a few steps removed from say CFD modeling of airplane wings. The thing is traditional sources of funding suck, and gov't labs give researchers a much better environment than the endle…

Your post is very puzzling. You, on one hand, sound exceptionally well educated but on the other hand describe a social circle that seems exceedingly ignorant or uninformed. Knowing the profound disconnect why would that make you embarrassed?

This is such a non sequitur that I looked through the parent poster's comment history to see if he'd made some other post down thread that you were replying to. Do you mean "people who work in military research", "people who work at military contractors" or was there something else I didn't pick up on?

Edit: Am not a military researcher, military contractor, etc.

Re: US Army applying new areas of math

#82

Post by austincheney »

chucksmash wrote: post #81
austincheney wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your post is very puzzling. You, on one hand, sound exceptionally well educated but on the other hand describe a social circle that seems exceedingly ignorant or uninformed. Knowing the profound disconnect why would that make you embarrassed?

This is such a non sequitur that I looked through the parent poster's comment history to see if he'd made some other post down thread that you were replying to. Do you mean "people who work in military research", "people who work at military contractors" or was there something else I didn't pick up on? Edit: Am not a military researcher, military contractor, etc.

I don't understand your comment. What people are you speaking about?

Re: US Army applying new areas of math

#83

Post by ska »

salty_biscuits wrote: post #65
ska wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You still need rigorous proofs at the end, if you are trying anything new. I think I would look at it more as you might try an ugly/practical approximation, or add a term, or whatever just to see if it will improve things. And maybe it gets you "close enough" for the application. But if you have a deep think about where you are stuck and come up with a new tool, then you have to be careful.

We call them "physicists" :)

hah. it's true ... there is a weird fuzzy line between theoretical physics and applied maths. Sometimes you're on the same page, sometime you really are not.

Re: US Army applying new areas of math

#84

Post by [deleted] »

austincheney wrote: post #82
chucksmash wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a non sequitur that I looked through the parent poster's comment history to see if he'd made some other post down thread that you were replying to. Do you mean "people who work in military research", "people who work at military contractors" or was there something else I didn't pick up on? Edit: Am not a military researcher, military contractor, etc.

I don't understand your comment. What people are you speaking about?

[deleted]

Re: US Army applying new areas of math

#85

Post by heimatau »

romwell wrote: post #8

For anyone interested in applying traditionally pure fields, Applied Topology has been slowly gaining steam lately (as reflected in the article: "topological" is now a hot word). Robert Ghrist of UPenn has been at the forefront of bringing topology into applied fields; and has written a good text on the subject.

Everything within Math can be described Topologically. Topology is gaining a lot of traction. It's pretty remarkable.

Re: US Army applying new areas of math

#86

Post by chucksmash »

austincheney wrote: post #82
chucksmash wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a non sequitur that I looked through the parent poster's comment history to see if he'd made some other post down thread that you were replying to. Do you mean "people who work in military research", "people who work at military contractors" or was there something else I didn't pick up on? Edit: Am not a military researcher, military contractor, etc.

I don't understand your comment. What people are you speaking about?

His social circle. Apologies if I missed something, but I don't understand where that comes into the equation.

Re: US Army applying new areas of math

#87

Post by orbifold »

wenc wrote: post #3

I wonder if there's anyone here working on Homotopy Type Theory that can explain what it is, and how it is used in modeling? I skimmed the PDF of the book but am drawing blank as to its connection to an application. Perhaps it's used for verification of concepts, similar to how formal methods in CS (e.g. TLA+) are used to conceptually check algorithms?

Personally I don't think it has any practical applications, but rather that this continues the trend of using the military to fund fundamental research. The main interest would probably be that HoTT allows for automatic theorem proving of more interesting theorems compared to other axiomatisations. It was originally designed to be able to do higher homotopy theory synthetically. The Lean theorem prover has actually dropped HoTT support. There is a certain chance that interest will vane after the founder Voevodsky died.

Re: US Army applying new areas of math

#88

Post by austincheney »

chucksmash wrote: post #86
austincheney wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your comment. What people are you speaking about?

His social circle. Apologies if I missed something, but I don't understand where that comes into the equation.

I cannot speak to the OPs social circle. To me it sounds pretty uninformed to think anybody working with the military is building bombs. The DOD (the US military) has about 2.8 million employees and there are about another 2 million people who work as defense contractors. I find it strange to think all those people could constantly be working on bombs.

By comparison the largest US commercial employer is WalMart with 1.5 million US employees. Imagine (for the sake of numbers) every WalMart employee and two of their kids constantly making bombs.

Re: US Army applying new areas of math

#89

Post by leetcrew »

asdffdsa wrote: post #63
bshipp wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a military is kind of like having house insurance. you wish you didn't have to spend the money on it, you hope you never have to actually use it, but it would be very irresponsible not to have it.

ie we spend a third of all our tax revenue on housing insurance

where is this "third" figure coming from?

Re: US Army applying new areas of math

#90

Post by imrelaxed »

geoka9 wrote: post #45
noobermin wrote: post #44

To be very honest, count me in as one of these. I am someone who works for a gov't lab, but I do "very pure" scientific research. It's not that our research doesn't have "defense applications," it might eventually, but we are definitely a few steps removed from say CFD modeling of airplane wings. The thing is traditional sources of funding suck, and gov't labs give researchers a much better environment than the endle…

> I just am embarrassed when I tell people I work for the military because they think I make bombs or something. Personally, I don't understand this, but I'm from an ex-Eastern Bloc country which I was all too happy to escape. I'd rather the US (and the rest of the Western world) made bombs than only Russia and China did. Vacuums of power in the world will always be filled and a Western invasion/expeditionary force i…

eastern block expat also, agree whole heartedly. People who complain about the US have no idea how much worse it would be to have Russia in such a position of power instead.
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