math (higher)...what is it good for? Absolutely nothing...huh! Say it again. Math!

[Pekka]

Well, I study math and programming and all there is to it. What is it used for, why is math not useless? I guess, to make it really simple, if you don't find any 'higher math' useful in your life, then it's not useful to you. If you have to ask, then it's not something that can be explained .

[Edan]

Re: math (higher)...what is it good for? Absolutely nothing...huh! Say it again. M

Originally posted by TCO

Makes me think about higher math. What is higher math? What uses does it have?

Off the top of my head, It's generally useful for physics, computer science/algorithms, cryptography, astronomy, etc.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by TCO
yeah. I think it is a common gap. Is it a big enough subject to justify a course? Is it equivalent of matrices? differential calculus?

There should be a course in it for sure. My first semester of grad school involved really getting down to it and learning to love tensors

[TCO]

Is Derek off sulking?

[Lul Thyme]

Its weird.
Two pages of a math thread, which are usually the most inspiring for me.
But I find nothing to say....

[Ted Striker]

Had to hit the weightroom.

My damn groin is sore again. Time to hit that machine that the girls do and all the perverts watch them do.

I'm sorry to see the Britney thread was closed.

[Ramo]

Algebra and geometry are cool. Topology is middling. Analysis is boring.

[Ramo]

yeah. I think it is a common gap. Is it a big enough subject to justify a course? Is it equivalent of matrices? differential calculus?

Tensor analysis is big enough for a course (I took one a couple semesters back). IMO, it's a bad idea to take GR without any tensor analysis or at the least differential geometry (my mistake).

It's not equivalent to vector/scalar analysis.

[Odin]

Of all the sciences, the reason I an going into biology is that it has the least math of all the natural sciences, because I HATE math. I like biology because it mostly deals with concepts, not arcane mathmatical laws. unfortunately, I need to take 2 or 3 math classes for my Major reqirements, and I am taking the first next fall, I am dreading it.

[TCO]

Originally posted by Ted Striker
Had to hit the weightroom.

My damn groin is sore again. Time to hit that machine that the girls do and all the perverts watch them do.

I'm sorry to see the Britney thread was closed.

I was worried you were sulking.

[Dinner]

Higher math is also useful in engineering and in geology we use it to calculate the stress stored up i rocks (well estimate stress really since without strain no one knows).

[TCO]

Originally posted by Lul Thyme
Its weird.
Two pages of a math thread, which are usually the most inspiring for me.
But I find nothing to say....

Ok...say this to me. What do you know of math, what do you do. What do you enjoy?

Or answer me this. In THE ROLLING STONES, the father instructs the twins to look at a map of the classifications of mathematical knowledge. They realize that they only know a little corner of it, when they thought they knew it all. So what should that picture look like? What is worth learning that one doesn't know? How does it compare to what someone just takes in normal uni?

[Lul Thyme]

Hum I enjoy many areas of mathematics, but probably mostly finite ones (finite algebras, combinatorics etc...).

I am not sure about the Rolling Stones, I know I use to think I knew almost all math in High School, when now, after years of pure math training, I think I know less and less respectively to what there is to know, and I learn what a huge and impressive building of knowledge mathematicians have constructed over the years.

What is worth learning and what is useful are two completly different questions.

Thirst for knowledge in the human cannot be always be linked to usefullness, in mathematics or otherwise...


If you want to know what "higher" mathematics is useful for...

Cryptography and coding is 100% based on it, computer science at its root, almost all of physics...
It really depends what you consider "higher" mathematics, I have not included basic linear algebra and calculus in the above applications (if you do, you can add all of science, art, and almost all human construction of the minds basically)

I want to stress, that most mathematicians do not really think about applications of their personnal research.
They do it because they like it, and they feel what they are doing is like a brick in the big building.
Now it just happens that the building as a whole underlies basically all scientific research, but mathematicians as individuals do not really spend much time looking for "real world" applications to their research, except maybe at grant time.

[Lul Thyme]

DP

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Higher math is also useful in engineering and in geology we use it to calculate the stress stored up i rocks (well estimate stress really since without strain no one knows).

what higher math?

calculus and differential equations don't count

everybody knows those