Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Math Myth

econlog.econlib.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 328 posts

Re: The Math Myth

#81

Post by sidlls »

sp527 wrote: post #19

This has so much more to do with the lack of easily monetizable applications of complex mathematics. I'm sure a significant number of engineers and STEM professionals feel (as I do) that they're deliberately eschewing those subjects not for a lack of interest, but rather as a response to market demand. The market of people who are genuinely passionate about complex subjects in math and science is saturated relative t…

I want everyone to read and re-read your bit about data science and machine learning. Many times. I think even people in the software industry underestimate both how accurate and how difficult it is to employ statistics to produce something truly meaningful.

My current job is on a data science team. I find it amusing that the business folks are able to sell our product, and then sigh to myself and do a little crying inside when I realize how it's possible.

Re: The Math Myth

#82

Post by astazangasta »

jdietrich wrote: post #80
majos wrote: post #53

I think one non-obvious benefit of a good mathematics education is that you have little choice but to develop a tolerance for and understanding of being wrong. See Jeremy Kun's blog post [1] for more, but my own experience has been that in e.g. discussing different ways to solve a problem or prove something almost every person eventually has an "oh, no, I see, I'm wrong and you're right" moment. Not that every mathem…

In my experience, a surprising number of people with a humanities education simply don't believe in "wrongness", but merely differences of opinion. They regard truth as peculiar abstraction used by mathematicians and hard scientists, not a phenomenon that actually exists. It's hard for someone to admit to being wrong if they don't even believe in the concept.

You obviously don't hang out with many statisticians, who also don't tend to believe in truth or being right or wrong; to them, they are just making models that can be tested to reliably approximate some observation. There is no pretense at truth, it's just a model.

Re: The Math Myth

#83

Post by petra »

nabla9 wrote: post #61
analog31 wrote: post #25

At my workplace, we have about 60 scientists and engineers. The author's observation is accurate, that most people never use math beyond Excel and 8th grade math. They also never use most of the theory that they learned in their science (including CS) and engineering educations. The typical career arc is to get through college, then sit down at a CAD workstation, or programming terminal, and forget all of your math a…

All mathematics is applied mathematics. Pure mathematics is just mathematics applied to mathematics. This is problematic, because the way mathematics is currently taught only small number of students actually grok it and make deep connections that enable them to build up on what they previously learned and learn more. Others have the constant feeling of things getting progressively harder to understand and use. I'm s…

>> I think it's possible to teach most people to think _in math_

Something like betterexplained.com who tries to develop people's math intuition ?

Re: The Math Myth

#84

Post by S4M »

NhanH wrote: post #20
iopq wrote: post #18

I think society would be a lot better if BASIC math and statistics would be better understood. How many times do you see a study posted here with N=23 and people say "the sample size is too small" when it's clearly not? How many people ask for a card deck change to change their luck? How many times do people read a poll like 49% +/- 3% vs. 43% +/- 3% and conclude the two candidates are statistically tied? I could pro…

To be fair, 0.9999... = 1 is not quite basic. You need to know things like infinitesimals, the distinction between value and representation of numbers etc.

I think I came to the conclusion that 0.9999999... = 1 when I was 12 or 13. My reasoning was that for any n, we had 0 <= 1 - 0.999999... <= 10^(-n), so the difference had to be 0.

Re: The Math Myth

#85

Post by JoeAltmaier »

NhanH wrote: post #20
iopq wrote: post #18

I think society would be a lot better if BASIC math and statistics would be better understood. How many times do you see a study posted here with N=23 and people say "the sample size is too small" when it's clearly not? How many people ask for a card deck change to change their luck? How many times do people read a poll like 49% +/- 3% vs. 43% +/- 3% and conclude the two candidates are statistically tied? I could pro…

To be fair, 0.9999... = 1 is not quite basic. You need to know things like infinitesimals, the distinction between value and representation of numbers etc.

Its just algebra. As noted elsewhere in this thread, 10X = 9.999... so 10X - X = 9.999... - 0.999... = 9 = 9X. So X=1.

Re: The Math Myth

#86

Post by losteverything »

I never enjoyed math as work but I like to work at Math. See everything in a math way. For me it's binary, sampling, data presence and relevance.

To convince others I often use examples. One is the discipline issues over the years. All BS. (1) totally made up. No data.

(1)http://www.snopes.com/language/document/school.asp

Re: The Math Myth

#87

Post by ausjke »

This is not just Math.

I learnt chemistry, physics, biology and all that from middle to high school. Now as a software engineer they're totally useless and I have long forgotten all those details that I spent months and years to memorize and master. Even reading a science-101 book in one day now will teach me more than what I can remember. Unless you plan to major in those fields, should we just take some introduction courses instead?

Also I can testify that I rarely need use any math beyond 8th grade since graduate school as a software engineer, I mean those calculus, matrix theory, fuzzy logic, neural network, etc. Well I may pick up some AI stuff now, but it's more like a start-from-scratch-now as I forgot what I learnt then totally already.

So yes the education system can be optimized to be more efficient.

Re: The Math Myth

#88

Post by nostrademons »

This largely matches my experience - as a software engineer, I spend probably In a market economy, basically all returns come from marginal gains. The vast majority of your lifetime income will come from a dozen or fewer opportunities that you happen to be in a position to take advantage of, whether it's a new job offer or a high-profile project you volunteer for or a startup that takes off. You will qualify for those opportunities based on the skills you have that other people don't have. They will make money for the organization because of features or insights that your competitors lack. Your customers will buy it because it lets them do things that they couldn't otherwise do.

The stuff that you and everyone else spends 99% of your time doing is economically irrelevant. You probably still need to do it (though if you can program a computer to do it, you have a huge leg up on competitors), but it doesn't get you anywhere.

Ironically, this is one of those insights that a good understanding of math will give you. The common-sense understanding is that we should be teaching what the majority of people are doing; the data says that we should be teaching what the majority of people are not doing but desire the results of.

Re: The Math Myth

#89

Post by Davidp00 »

yodsanklai wrote: post #67
sp527 wrote: post #19

This has so much more to do with the lack of easily monetizable applications of complex mathematics. I'm sure a significant number of engineers and STEM professionals feel (as I do) that they're deliberately eschewing those subjects not for a lack of interest, but rather as a response to market demand. The market of people who are genuinely passionate about complex subjects in math and science is saturated relative t…

> It makes more sense for an intelligent person to take the lower overhead and more achievable approach to becoming a value creator (e.g. full stack engineer with a strong focus on product development) I would say that the surest way to make money for a mathematicaly-inclined person is to graduate in maths from a prestigious school and work in finance. At least, that's how I feel when I look at alumni from my school.…

>Those that went into finance make consistently much more than the others

Hm, I would never have guessed that. Does anyone have any data on this?

The top 1% sure, but the average and median also?

Re: The Math Myth

#90

Post by dTal »

nzp wrote: post #7

Of course, the economy doesn't depend on masses having solid mathematical education (and knowledge), but the world would be a much, much better place if all kinds of “advanced” math was common knowledge and skill (and not just math). I am aware that that is currently a bit of a sci-fi scenario. Anyway, the author need not worry a thing — wishful thinking aside, as long as we live in a capitalist society, we're in no…

Indeed; just because a job can be done without mathematics, doesn't mean it can be done as well, or as fast, or with as much confidence in the solution.

One could interpret a lack of use of mathematics as less of an indication it's not needed and more of an indication we're not maximising our efficiency.

Post reply on HN