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Everyone is capable of, and can benefit from, mathematical thinking

quantamagazine.org

11–20 of 419 posts

Re: Everyone is capable of, and can benefit from, mathematical thinking

#11

I used to get very frustrated that others could not intuit information the way I could. I have a lot of experience trying to express quantities to leaders and policymakers. At the very minimum, I ask people to always think of the distribution of whatever figure they are given. Just that is far more than so many are willing to do.

Waste of time. Just talk in terms of what they want to hear. They are just interested in the payoffs (not in the details).

As info explodes and specialists dive deeper into their niches, info asymmetry between ppl increases. There are thousands of specialists running in different directions at different speeds. Leaders can't keep up.

Their job is to try to get all these "vectors" aligned toward common goals, prevent fragmentation and division.

And while most specialists think this "sync" process happens through "education" and getting everyone to understand a complex ever changing universe, the truth is large diverse groups are kept in sync via status signalling, carrot/stick etc. This is why leaders will pay attention when you talk in terms of what increases clout/status/wealth/security/followers etc. Cause thats their biggest tool to prevent schisms and collapse.

Re: Everyone is capable of, and can benefit from, mathematical thinking

#12

This guy is unbelievably French (I mean in his intellectual character). Here I was expecting a kind of rehash of the 20th century movements of pure math and high modernism[0], but instead we get a frankly Hegelian concept of math or at least a Hegel filtered through 20th and 21st century French philosophy. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41962944

I was actually thinking Jean Paul Satre when I read his answers

Re: Everyone is capable of, and can benefit from, mathematical thinking

#13

A nice sentiment but clearly a large % of people never do learn even basic mathematical thinking and seem very confused by it. So is there some scientific study backing up the claim that all these people could easily learn it or are we just making it up because its a nice egalitarian thesis for a math popularization book?

>A nice sentiment but clearly a large % of people never do learn even basic mathematical thinking and seem very confused by it

Any healthy/able individual could learn to deadlift twice their bodyweight with sufficient training, but the vast majority of people never reach this basic fitness milestone, because they don't put any time into achieving it. There's a very large gap between what people are capable of theoretically and what they achieve in practice.

Re: Everyone is capable of, and can benefit from, mathematical thinking

#14

A nice sentiment but clearly a large % of people never do learn even basic mathematical thinking and seem very confused by it. So is there some scientific study backing up the claim that all these people could easily learn it or are we just making it up because its a nice egalitarian thesis for a math popularization book?

> So is there some scientific study backing up the claim that all these people could easily learn it [emphasis added]

Who said it would be easy?

Re: Everyone is capable of, and can benefit from, mathematical thinking

#15
I agree with the sentiment of this. I think our obsession with innate mathematical skill and genius is so detrimental to the growth mindset that you need to have in order to learn things.

I've been working a lot on my math skills lately (as an adult). A mindset I've had in the past is that "if it's hard, then that means you've hit your ceiling and you're wasting your time." But really, the opposite is true. If it's easy, then it means you already know this material, and you're wasting your time.

Re: Everyone is capable of, and can benefit from, mathematical thinking

#16

A nice sentiment but clearly a large % of people never do learn even basic mathematical thinking and seem very confused by it. So is there some scientific study backing up the claim that all these people could easily learn it or are we just making it up because its a nice egalitarian thesis for a math popularization book?

>A nice sentiment but clearly a large % of people never do learn even basic mathematical thinking and seem very confused by it Any healthy/able individual could learn to deadlift twice their bodyweight with sufficient training, but the vast majority of people never reach this basic fitness milestone, because they don't put any time into achieving it. There's a very large gap between what people are capable of theoret…

[dead]

Re: Everyone is capable of, and can benefit from, mathematical thinking

#17

I’m far from being any kind of serious mathematician, but I’ve learned more in the last couple years of taking that seriously as an ambition than in decades of relegating myself to inferiority on it. One of the highly generous mentors who dragged me kicking and screaming into the world of even making an attempt told me: “There are no bad math students. There are only bad math teachers who themselves had bad math teac…

Sadly, when I was a postdoc, an eminent mathematician I was working under once shared a story that he found amusing that one of his colleagues was once asked a question in the form: "This might be a stupid question, but..." and the response was "There are no stupid questions, only stupid people."

Run into too many people like that, who I daresay are common in the field, and it's easy to see how people become dispirited and give up.

Re: Everyone is capable of, and can benefit from, mathematical thinking

#19
post #5

I studied math hard for several years in college and graduate school—purely out of interest and enjoyment, not for any practical purpose. That was more than forty years ago, but Bessis's description of the role of intuition in learning and doing math matches my recollection of my subjective experience of it. Whether that youthful immersion in math in fact benefitted me in later life and whether that kind of thinking…

Have you ever ascribed numbers to real life personal problems? I find that managing to frame something bothersome into a converging limit somehow, really dissolves stress.. A few times at least.

Re: Everyone is capable of, and can benefit from, mathematical thinking

#20
post #17

I’m far from being any kind of serious mathematician, but I’ve learned more in the last couple years of taking that seriously as an ambition than in decades of relegating myself to inferiority on it. One of the highly generous mentors who dragged me kicking and screaming into the world of even making an attempt told me: “There are no bad math students. There are only bad math teachers who themselves had bad math teac…

Sadly, when I was a postdoc, an eminent mathematician I was working under once shared a story that he found amusing that one of his colleagues was once asked a question in the form: "This might be a stupid question, but..." and the response was "There are no stupid questions, only stupid people." Run into too many people like that, who I daresay are common in the field, and it's easy to see how people become dispirit…

I think we can recognize Pauli for his identification of one of the few magic gadgets we accept around spin statistics without accepting his educational philosophy: “Das ist nicht einmal falsch.”

He was right on the nature of the universe, he was wrong on making a better world. I for one forgive him on the basis of time served.

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