Friendly warning to those who might not be aware: the vast majority of comments below posts like the above will be left by (otherwise intelligent) programmers who think mathematics is a closed system where one attempts to solve endless Olympiad-type problems. I wouldn’t take any of it seriously at all. Better to listen to what those who actually know what the subject is about have to say.
Unfortunately, mathematics (especially pure mathematics) is by its very nature very, very poorly understood by those who haven’t worked as a mathematician. Even worse, those who don’t understand are seemingly not at all aware of their misunderstanding and are entirely confident in their (very wrong) characterisation of the subject.
I did systems administration for a university math department for several years. I came to the conclusion that mathematics (and perhaps philosophy) were both topics where it was likely that no staff members in that department could describe "what goes on here" and that possibly even within the department, one professor may not be able to describe what another professor's actually doing.
The closest I could come to describing math is "some abstract process where imagined structures are characterized and extended; the most critical part of the process is identifying where seemingly independent structures are found to actually be fungible in some previously undiscovered way".
A simple example is
"hey, did you know that x^i is the unit circle?"
"what's i?"
"i is defined as if you square it the result is -1"
"what does that have to do with circles?"
The clue is burried in the text of OP's article.
> Mathematicians can also consider wholly redirecting their skill sets to work on real world problems. I’ve actually been encouraging mathematicians to consider thinking about working on government or other large-scale societal issues.
The fact that this is a radical departure from the norm is part of why mathematics (and philosophy) is often seen as some intangible or ungrokable science to many outsiders, as they're generally approaching it from a perspective of "Okay, but why, what is this useful for?", and the answer "For the science of it" doesn't tend to land with people that aren't already passionate about said science/discipline and are just trying to figure out what it even is or involves.
Doesn't help that there is a pervasive sentiment in American Academia (not sure about elsewhere) about Math being *the* hard science, and I mean hard as in difficulty, so a lot of people get intimidated by it before they ever give it a chance very early on in their academic life and carry that through the rest of their education.
So there ends up being a rather small pool of people that are in(to) the field, and rather high friction for stimualting interest in it from outsiders from the way that it's taught, and a massive difference in the perspective of it's use between it's diaspora and the unmathed masses.
Mathematicians who do work on "real world" problems are mostly doing so with theoretical physicists, genomicists, and cryptographers. None of these count as what people consider valuable other than because they are hard.
That said, few 50 (or even 40) years ago would have predicted that completely abstract number theoretical computations about primes, discrete logarithms, and elliptic curves would be the foundation of our monetary system.
> I did systems administration for a university math department for several years. I came to the conclusion that mathematics (and perhaps philosophy) were both topics where it was likely that no staff members in that department could describe "what goes on here" and that possibly even within the department, one professor may not be able to describe what another professor's actually doing.
And this is indeed why it is not going to be taken seriously as an academic or (more importantly) an economic endeavour done by humans anymore.
That won't stop the career mathematicians from protesting and having a cry here trying to justify themselves.
xanderlewis · · focus · HN ↗
Unfortunately, mathematics (especially pure mathematics) is by its very nature very, very poorly understood by those who haven’t worked as a mathematician. Even worse, those who don’t understand are seemingly not at all aware of their misunderstanding and are entirely confident in their (very wrong) characterisation of the subject.
cduzz · · focus · HN ↗
The closest I could come to describing math is "some abstract process where imagined structures are characterized and extended; the most critical part of the process is identifying where seemingly independent structures are found to actually be fungible in some previously undiscovered way".
A simple example is
0manrho · · focus · HN ↗
> Mathematicians can also consider wholly redirecting their skill sets to work on real world problems. I’ve actually been encouraging mathematicians to consider thinking about working on government or other large-scale societal issues.
The fact that this is a radical departure from the norm is part of why mathematics (and philosophy) is often seen as some intangible or ungrokable science to many outsiders, as they're generally approaching it from a perspective of "Okay, but why, what is this useful for?", and the answer "For the science of it" doesn't tend to land with people that aren't already passionate about said science/discipline and are just trying to figure out what it even is or involves.
Doesn't help that there is a pervasive sentiment in American Academia (not sure about elsewhere) about Math being *the* hard science, and I mean hard as in difficulty, so a lot of people get intimidated by it before they ever give it a chance very early on in their academic life and carry that through the rest of their education.
So there ends up being a rather small pool of people that are in(to) the field, and rather high friction for stimualting interest in it from outsiders from the way that it's taught, and a massive difference in the perspective of it's use between it's diaspora and the unmathed masses.
kurthr · · focus · HN ↗
That said, few 50 (or even 40) years ago would have predicted that completely abstract number theoretical computations about primes, discrete logarithms, and elliptic curves would be the foundation of our monetary system.
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted]
0manrho · · focus · HN ↗
avazhi · · focus · HN ↗
And this is indeed why it is not going to be taken seriously as an academic or (more importantly) an economic endeavour done by humans anymore.
That won't stop the career mathematicians from protesting and having a cry here trying to justify themselves.
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted]