What's a Mathematician to do?
mathoverflow.net
What's a Mathematician to do?
1–10 of 49 posts
Re: What's a Mathematician to do?
#2Good luck having a discussion about this here.
Math is for zany, nerdy hermits! Math is opposed to humanities -- right HN?
Re: What's a Mathematician to do?
#3That's an excellent response. In one of the comments on it, there is a link to a paper[1] by Thurston that is well worth your time. I found it an inspiring read.
Re: What's a Mathematician to do?
#4Good luck having a discussion about this here. Math is for zany, nerdy hermits! Math is opposed to humanities -- right HN?
derp
Re: What's a Mathematician to do?
#5Interesting read, and the whole thread was shut down by moderators... as usual!
Re: What's a Mathematician to do?
#6[deleted]
Re: What's a Mathematician to do?
#7This is great. And this bit:
"mathematics only exists in a living community of mathematicians that spreads understanding and breaths life into ideas both old and new"
generalizes pretty well into:
"Understanding only exists in a living community of thinker/practitioners refining and breathing life into ideas old and new."
Re: What's a Mathematician to do?
#8A classic mathoverflow moderator debacle. Good question, marked community wiki, with good answers including the top-ranked one from Bill Thurston, an accomplished and beloved mathematician who died just a couple of years ago. Despite the amount of work put into the answers and the number of upvotes, the question is closed. Comments on the top answer deleted, even though other comments refer to them, leaving new visitors to the question momentarily confused. Luckily [closed] doesn't mean [deleted]. I guess the best place to post these kinds of questions is Quora? There seems to be quite a few high-caliber posters there now, including many from mathoverflow. I really like mathoverflow, it's just my personal opinion that the mods are too anal (read: conservative) about enforcing the narrow scope of the site.
Re: What's a Mathematician to do?
#9A classic mathoverflow moderator debacle. Good question, marked community wiki, with good answers including the top-ranked one from Bill Thurston, an accomplished and beloved mathematician who died just a couple of years ago. Despite the amount of work put into the answers and the number of upvotes, the question is closed. Comments on the top answer deleted, even though other comments refer to them, leaving new visit…
I don't get it.
This question is unlikely to help any future visitors; it is only relevant to a small geographic area, a specific moment in time, or an extraordinarily narrow situation that is not generally applicable to the worldwide audience of the internet.
How is that even remotely true? This is probably the most widely applicable question on the site?
Re: What's a Mathematician to do?
#10A classic mathoverflow moderator debacle. Good question, marked community wiki, with good answers including the top-ranked one from Bill Thurston, an accomplished and beloved mathematician who died just a couple of years ago. Despite the amount of work put into the answers and the number of upvotes, the question is closed. Comments on the top answer deleted, even though other comments refer to them, leaving new visit…
By design, Quora I suppose does seem like a better place to post a question like this. But I really don't think Quora's community is anywhere near the caliber of that of Mathoverflow. I guess I haven't been active on MO in a few years so maybe things have changed, but when I last actively read it the site was frequented by quite a few very illustrious names and countless young prodigies and miscellaneous professors.