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How you eat corn on the cob predicts whether you're an analyst or algebraist

bentilly.blogspot.com

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Re: How you eat corn on the cob predicts whether you're an analyst or algebraist

#4

Post by shardling »

dbbolton wrote: post #3

He predicted me pretty well: spirals, functional, vi. But even though I have a decent amount of upper-level math experience, I can't say whether I really prefer analysis over algebra. I think it just depends on the problem at hand.

Well, what do you consider "upper-level" math? The original article definitely means graduate level classes, not just advanced undergrad.

FWIW, I'm a physicist and used not rows or spirals but the "columns" approach mentioned by one commenter. :) And I probably couldn't tell you what type of math I prefer.

Re: How you eat corn on the cob predicts whether you're an analyst or algebraist

#6

Post by electronvolt »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #2

I'm wondering if recursion v. iteration might be a better test than OO v. functional.

Except that you'd get rather unintuitive results: recursion seems to tie nicely to algebra, while iteration seems to tie nicely to analysis (algebra: see group actions, modules, lattice decompositions, analysis: many proofs require chaining inequalities together). But recursion is generally associated with functional languages/LISP/etc., while iteration is much more associated with traditional OO languages (and objects are pretty algebraic, the author gets that right).

I'd say it's probably more dynamic typing versus static typing. Dynamic typing matches up very well with the sort of fuzzy proofs that occur in analysis ("well this is less than that, and that is less than the other, so this is less than the other by a little bit" seems close to "quacks like a duck"), and static typing seems very much like an algebraic idea.

But, as someone working on a math masters, I can say that I prefer analysis and really like dynamically typed languages, so this might just be my pet theory of matching the world to myself.

Re: How you eat corn on the cob predicts whether you're an analyst or algebraist

#7

Post by jboggan »

Weird. I got heavy into algebra, algebraic topology, and graph theory early on and never cared a whit for analysis. I eat like a typewriter.

In my home state of Georgia the two major public universities are very lopsided in their math departments. University of Georgia is very strong in algebra and Georgia Tech is very strong in analysis. I went to both but fit in much better in the former department.

I have a bunch of job interviews coming up - I'm going to ask my interviewers how they eat their corn as a wedge into discussing problem solving strategies on their teams.

Re: How you eat corn on the cob predicts whether you're an analyst or algebraist

#8

Post by carterschonwald »

Hehe, I'm on both sides and it shows in all three directions. I like all areas of math once I get to know them, and I'm currently rolling numerical computation tools in Haskell :p (as my job! its pretty great. shoot me an email if that sound fun and you'd like to learn more )

Great silly post to end the day with

Re: How you eat corn on the cob predicts whether you're an analyst or algebraist

#10

Post by tshile »

carterschonwald wrote: post #8

Hehe, I'm on both sides and it shows in all three directions. I like all areas of math once I get to know them, and I'm currently rolling numerical computation tools in Haskell :p (as my job! its pretty great. shoot me an email if that sound fun and you'd like to learn more ) Great silly post to end the day with

I like the algebra side, love emacs, and am currently thoroughly enjoying learning lisp. I eat my corn in rows :)

Was a fun read!

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