31–40 of 129 posts
If you read any science papers, they start with a clear introduction with the aims, claims, importance and novelty of the work. A lot of math papers (but not all) just start off with a dry statement of what the theorems being proved are, and jump right into the proofs. I always wonder why editors don't understand the importance of these things and don't enforce them.
If you read any science papers, they start with a clear introduction with the aims, claims, importance and novelty of the work. A lot of math papers (but not all) just start off with a dry statement of what the theorems being proved are, and jump right into the proofs. I always wonder why editors don't understand the importance of these things and don't enforce them.
An example is a paper with several mouse experiments. In results it'll often have a single section saying that mice were raised such and such under conditions A or B. They were treated with X or Y and samples were collected after certain times. But was Y treated on A or B mice? From results its clear that X was done on both but no mention for Y. I guess A is more the default and they'd have specified B if that were the case, so probably A.
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Math will only emerge as a field when people will stop treating it as something that one only has to do at the frontier. In other competitive fields such as banking, basketball and football you have the higher ups caring about the pyramid below them, if only as a place to recruit new talents. Among the math higher ups, only Jim Simons cares about the "math pyramid" so to speak. One has to be pragmatic, the goal of ge…
What are you talking about? Mathematics has well and truly "emerged as a field" lmao
Also cortisol levels spike before a math exam compared to again English or history.
Notoriously math is the most hated subject/field. There is no point trying to hide it.
Unless one is a masochist, then it's desirable to be popular, and although the field cannot and should not be watered down for the sake of ease of access , I think there is lots of room before reaching that point, but nobody is interested in making such effort
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The idea that unfamiliar symbols and alphabets are a huge problem for the accessibility of math is common. As physicist I do not agree. Math is hard. It's damned difficult. Symbols and alphabets are the least of your concerns when dealing with a math paper. I know a lot of these symbols by name, I sometimes understand the notation or could familiarize myself with it but the math itself? Nope, no chance, usually. If o…
I'll disagree. I read many papers with mathematics in them, and I get a lot of the concepts but the symbology used doesn't make sense to me so its hard for me to understand what is exactly going on. The sentence after the equation that explains each symbol is necessary for me, and many others as well. Not everyone has taken 8 math classes to know each kroniger delta by heart.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The idea that unfamiliar symbols and alphabets are a huge problem for the accessibility of math is common. As physicist I do not agree. Math is hard. It's damned difficult. Symbols and alphabets are the least of your concerns when dealing with a math paper. I know a lot of these symbols by name, I sometimes understand the notation or could familiarize myself with it but the math itself? Nope, no chance, usually. If o…
I'll disagree. I read many papers with mathematics in them, and I get a lot of the concepts but the symbology used doesn't make sense to me so its hard for me to understand what is exactly going on. The sentence after the equation that explains each symbol is necessary for me, and many others as well. Not everyone has taken 8 math classes to know each kroniger delta by heart.
Moreover, mathematician seems driven by a frugal principle. They try to condense their though in the smallest number of symbols. To me it's like writing a Perl program with the shortest amount of text. Of course, the result is right, but it's super hard to understand.
If you read any science papers, they start with a clear introduction with the aims, claims, importance and novelty of the work. A lot of math papers (but not all) just start off with a dry statement of what the theorems being proved are, and jump right into the proofs. I always wonder why editors don't understand the importance of these things and don't enforce them.
Relatedly, a lot of recipe books just have a dry statement of what the ingredients are and how to combine them. They should be more like CS and science papers, and explain the narrative of why the recipe is exciting, and where it comes from, and what it means for the cook. (Posted from a parallel universe.)
You've just described practically any modern recipe website.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are you talking about? Mathematics has well and truly "emerged as a field" lmao
I think you'd be surprised if you gathered data on amount of cursing which goes on in colleges when students have to face math vs. English or history Also cortisol levels spike before a math exam compared to again English or history. Notoriously math is the most hated subject/field. There is no point trying to hide it. Unless one is a masochist, then it's desirable to be popular, and although the field cannot and sho…