The Rise Of The Artist

Truly?

Programming requires a whole lot of creativity (sometimes enough to sap it from your other creative endeavors). Not necessarily in the part where you write the if, else, for and while stuff, but the part before that - when you're figuring out what you actually want to DO.

I've spent hours simply thinking about the best algorithm to use for a task. Sitting there with a notebook, sketching different possibilities over a simple example, thinking about its algorithmic complexity and whether there's a way to do it better. Considering what data structures I need to implement it, and the trade-offs between those choices. Whether I might just need to start over altogether (and I have; on some of the more challenging algorithm assignments, I've gone through 4 iterations of implementation before I hit one I was happy with).

You might call that engineering. But, the act of actually COMING UP with new algorithms and implementations that might solve the problem? That's creativity. And the harder the problem, the more it takes to solve.

Maybe it's just that I'm still a student, doing some projects on my own and doing a lot of homework assignments. I don't know what kind of coding you're doing, but if you can do it mechanically, without requiring any creativity whatsoever, then it doesn't sound like a very good use of your time.

RISD is a very small school. Only 2,282 students total. According to [1], they had 835 admissions, with a 34% acceptance rate. If my math is right, that makes for 2,455 applicants.

Julliard is even smaller (800 students), though much more selective. According to [2], they had 2,138 applicants (of which they admitted 162 -- an 8% acceptance rate).

So that's 4,420 total applicants to RISD and Julliard combined.

According to [3], there were 3.3 million high school graduates in 2008. That would make for 0.13% (or about 1 out of 1000) high school graduates "pile on" Julliard and RISD. While 999 out of 1000 don't apply to either school (and the overwhelming majority of those probably not to any kind of art career path at all).

"No, actually beyond basic high school math many people never touch math again. Not even calculus."

Ok. But how much math did they take by the time they make it through high school math? Maybe 9, 10, or even 12 years of math. Which is probably an order of magnitude more than they have years of art.

"You talk about the ones on their way to becoming engineers and such. That's like complaining that people at chef school take more cooking classes than astrophysics classes. You talk about engineers, programmers, and scientists like everyone's just lining up at the door to become one."

Well, let's take a look at the 10 most popular majors in 2008.[4]

Biology, Business administration and management, Communications, Computer science, Criminal justice, Elementary education, Marketing, Nursing, Psychology, Political science.

Of those, I'd say Nursing and the more sciencey fields like Biology, Computer science, Psychology, and maybe some Political science need math. The others not so much. Of course, out of these, Computer science is the most math-heavy.

Incidentally, according to this[5], Stanford's most popular major now is Computer Science.

So, that's a fair bit of math there. Not as much as you'd need to major in engineering, applied math, or mathematics itself, of course. But perhaps more than what's taught in most high schools.

Now, compare that to how many of these majors need art. I would say none of them do. And none of them are any kind of art major. So, yes, I think math has a very strong lead over art as far as the most popular majors go.

[1] - http://www.theu.com/admissions_ratings/rhode_island_school_o...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juilliard_School#Admittance

[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_admissions_in_the_Unit...

[4] - http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/worklife/10/27/cb.what.major....

[5] - http://mashable.com/2012/07/01/stanford-top-major-computer-s...

The compulsion or "drive" to create is something else, and perhaps that is more innate. I'm not sure what the research says about this, actually.

Certainly a lot of people "want" to be creative, just as they may "want" to write a novel. But few want to put in the hard work to make it (writing the novel) happen. Being "creative" is also hard work. Especially when you have to do it consistently and over a long period of time. Relatively few are compelled or driven to do so.

This is the first thing that I wanted to say, and I'm glad to see it already represented in this thread. The only myths that get to me as much as perpetuation of the Left- vs. Right-brained business are statements that assume a zero-sum model of economics/trade, or statements that imply a 1:1 mapping of specific genes to specific functions/physical traits.

It's a more academic version of "So are you a dog person, or a cat person? Oh you're X? That means, you like to Y and and hate it when people Z!"

Getting past that and allowing the neuromyth as a metaphor for "creative" versus "process-oriented", there are still all sorts of issues that I take with that sort of one-dimensional categorization being placed on a person.