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Lessons of an MIT Education

math.tamu.edu

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Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#21

Post by phaus »

david-gpu wrote: post #8
baxtr wrote: post #4

> Lesson Ten: Mathematics is still the queen of the sciences. > When an undergraduate asks me whether he or she should major in mathematics rather than in another field that I will simply call X, my answer is the following: "If you major in mathematics, you can switch to X anytime you want to, but not the other way around." You can argue that with Physics as well. However, I have learned in my life, that there is a v…

> "If you major in mathematics, you can switch to X anytime you want to, but not the other way around." I hear people say that about mathematicians, physicists and even philosophers, yet I've never come across any of them in my career. I suspect it's wishful thinking.

Are you a developer? I've run into at least a few math majors working in software dev/netsec.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#22

Post by wenc »

icc97 wrote: post #3

> The world and your career are unpredictable, so you are better off learning subjects of permanent value. I've been looking for a way to express this idea for years. Doing a core subject at University like Mathematics or Physics can be used in a million different careers. In a similar way I'd recommend learning say Functional Programming over React or Scala. Plus I guess learning Category Theory over functional prog…

> learning Category Theory

There is a level of abstraction which for most people is the wrong end of the stick to start from. Category theory is one of them. (and I'm a big fan of category theory and Haskell).

Category theory may occasionally lead to elegant, orthogonal and consistent solutions, especially if you are building new abstract tooling (LINQ in C# is a good example). It gives you tools to reason about structure.

However in most situations, it doesn't give you anything you can directly use. Most of them time it serves to clarify and enlighten rather than generate. Categorical thinking [0] may be more useful than the actual theory.

If you seek to apply category theory without first getting your hands dirty with conventional "inefficient" programming, you will end up with abstruse solutions that are potentially overly complicated and unmaintainable. Applying theory without the requisite real-world experience (to temper the tendency toward heavy abstraction) is a problem of youth. The world is not full of highly-intelligent people who can work with highly abstract code. One needs to learn to work with the inelegance in the real world and with other people in the system. A larger coherent system, though weak in parts, may produce a better result than a few bright people.

[0] https://www.johndcook.com/blog/applied-category-theory/

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#23

Post by foldr »

hudibras wrote: post #14
dougmwne wrote: post #6

The author was quite harsh on the soft sciencies and humanities and I'm going to attempt a defense. First, he characterises these subjects as merely what, facts to be learned, instead of how, skills to be mastered. Let's take history, which seems very what, full of dates and names. A great course in history teaches you how to think differently and with deeper context about world events and your country's politics. I…

I don't think he was that harsh, and he actually praised the "knowing what" subjects. He simply meant that at MIT , the "knowing how" is more important.

What I don't understand about this comparison is that there's actually an awful lot of "knowing what" involved in math and science too. You won't get far in solving math problems if you try to derive everything from first principles. You could make fun of historians for learning lists of dates, but you could also make fun of mathematicians for learning lists of trigonometric identities.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#24

Post by foldr »

throwanem wrote: post #19
foldr wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people in most jobs are doing work that's not directly related to their degree.

I've worked with a lot more math and physics grads than, say, poli sci or sports medicine grads. Not to disparage fields that aren't math or physics, and I don't have a degree in the fight in any case; just that I have noticed something of a preponderance over the years among those who do have degrees not actually in the field.

Right, but there are other fields of work where poli sci grads would be more common than math and physics grads.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#25

Post by foldr »

sdenton4 wrote: post #18
foldr wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, what is it even supposed to mean? You can become a doctor or a lawyer or whatever just like that because you have a degree in math?

It's pretty common for math majors to go kick ass in the LSAT and become lawyers. Switching to medicine is a bit less common, I think.

It's common for people from lots of fields to go to law school, AFAIK. I don't see why a math degree specifically would be helpful in making that switch.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#26

Post by brudgers »

dougmwne wrote: post #6

The author was quite harsh on the soft sciencies and humanities and I'm going to attempt a defense. First, he characterises these subjects as merely what, facts to be learned, instead of how, skills to be mastered. Let's take history, which seems very what, full of dates and names. A great course in history teaches you how to think differently and with deeper context about world events and your country's politics. I…

An MIT professor can be naive. A history major learns how to read and analyze documents...and how to write. An art major learns how to create art. An even more significant difference between these and many contemporary STEM subjects is that an undergraduate is expected to know how to create original work...there's no copying art homework especially not in an advanced class.

These days I think that the creative element of programming is why software is eating the world at the pace it is. Undergrads can look at each other's code and say Wow! while one titration is fungible with every other.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#27

Post by rayiner »

dougmwne wrote: post #6

The author was quite harsh on the soft sciencies and humanities and I'm going to attempt a defense. First, he characterises these subjects as merely what, facts to be learned, instead of how, skills to be mastered. Let's take history, which seems very what, full of dates and names. A great course in history teaches you how to think differently and with deeper context about world events and your country's politics. I…

The charactetization is incorrect. The liberal arts do teach “how.” Creative writing or political philosophy or history teaches you skills you can use to analayze scenarios and communicate with people in different ways to different effect.

Where the author is correct is that in those fields the output isn’t falsifiable. Your math skills allow you to construct proofs that can be verified. Your study of history allows you to write accounts explaining and putting in context historical events in a way that is pursuasive to other people. But they are not falsifiable.

I agree with holding the former in higher esteem. Being able to communicate with people is important, but it’s an impoverished basis for an education. It’s terrifying that many students manage to graduate without much exposure to the world of objective reality and truth that exists around them (and which makes their lifestyles possible).

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#28

Post by brians »

dougmwne wrote: post #6

The author was quite harsh on the soft sciencies and humanities and I'm going to attempt a defense. First, he characterises these subjects as merely what, facts to be learned, instead of how, skills to be mastered. Let's take history, which seems very what, full of dates and names. A great course in history teaches you how to think differently and with deeper context about world events and your country's politics. I…

It may be relevant that the author held dual chairs in Mathematics and Philosophy (phenomenology, I think).

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#29

Post by gooseus »

hudibras wrote: post #14
dougmwne wrote: post #6

The author was quite harsh on the soft sciencies and humanities and I'm going to attempt a defense. First, he characterises these subjects as merely what, facts to be learned, instead of how, skills to be mastered. Let's take history, which seems very what, full of dates and names. A great course in history teaches you how to think differently and with deeper context about world events and your country's politics. I…

I don't think he was that harsh, and he actually praised the "knowing what" subjects. He simply meant that at MIT , the "knowing how" is more important.

I think mistaking History for a "knowing what" subject rather than a "knowing how" subject is a terrible misconception.

Understanding how societies and civilizations reacted to different pressures and how the structure and nature of their institutions evolved and handled those pressures is much more important than remembering what happened where.

Those who fail to learn from the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them, as they say.

Re: Lessons of an MIT Education

#30

Post by jack_pp »

dougmwne wrote: post #6

The author was quite harsh on the soft sciencies and humanities and I'm going to attempt a defense. First, he characterises these subjects as merely what, facts to be learned, instead of how, skills to be mastered. Let's take history, which seems very what, full of dates and names. A great course in history teaches you how to think differently and with deeper context about world events and your country's politics. I…

For anyone interested in learning more about people (and yourselves) I highly recommend Jordan Petersons' lectures on youtube. I believe he has started working on an online university for the humanities with all the money he's bringing in from patreon (he wisely hid it recently but it was close to 60k per month last time it wasn't)
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