A Path Less Taken to the Peak of the Math World
quantamagazine.org
A Path Less Taken to the Peak of the Math World
1–10 of 51 posts
Re: A Path Less Taken to the Peak of the Math World
#2I 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 another. As a teenager he took to poetry instead, viewing it as a realm of true creative expression.
But then...
By the time he enrolled at Seoul National University in 2002, he had concluded that he couldn’t make a living as a poet, so he decided to become a science journalist instead. He majored in astronomy and physics, in perhaps an unconscious nod to his latent analytic abilities.
Can someone explain how someone who has decided to distance himself from math can major in PHYSICS?!
Re: A Path Less Taken to the Peak of the Math World
#3tl;dr wish they could just get to the point
Re: A Path Less Taken to the Peak of the Math World
#4I 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 me various times, first time I was not even an undergrad yet.
Re: A Path Less Taken to the Peak of the Math World
#5I 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?!
Exactly that. At my university first-year physics students would effectively take the same courses as mathematics students and Mathematical Methods in Physics on top of that.
Re: A Path Less Taken to the Peak of the Math World
#6Ed 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!
Re: A Path Less Taken to the Peak of the Math World
#7I 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…
Well he says this, "he decided to regard it as a barren pursuit of one logically necessary statement piled atop another"
This indicates that he views a certain type of worthlessness in math. Then he can justify not being good at math, and distance himself from the pursuit of math on its own grounds.
Of course his perception of him not being good at math and actually not being good at math are two different things. Physics uses math, but not for maths sake. And in reality, I'm sure he was more than competent in math, so the level of math required for undergrad physics was not a problem.
It was only, through his journalism, did he let down his guard enough to enjoy math for maths sake -- and realize that a test you took in elementary school needn't define you.
Re: A Path Less Taken to the Peak of the Math World
#8Ed 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!
His mathematical talent is his greatest ability. But the ability to willingly switch fields to find what you're good at (or enjoy) is also important, and something most of us either don't have the nerve or engine to do.
Re: A Path Less Taken to the Peak of the Math World
#9I 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…
Probably just passing along the farcical story June Huh tells himself.
Re: A Path Less Taken to the Peak of the Math World
#10I 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?! Exactly that. At my university first-year physics students would effectively take the same courses as mathematics students and Mathematical Methods in Physics on top of that.
There is, in my experience, a difference between the courses required of mathematics majors and the courses that students who might want to be mathematicians are expected to take.