How do you learn new math?

[DaShi]

During my stats lectures, whenever the teacher said "...using a fair die/coin," I always wanted to shout out, "It's ok! We trust you!"

[Kuciwalker]

a) There's nothing "pseudo" about any of those things

"seed" being the operative word.

c) The requirements for rngs are different than the requirements for crypto (generally less stringent)

prng's typically fall under crypto as an area of academic research. Most crypto algorithms use rngs or prngs and can be used as prngs themselves.

[KrazyHorse]

That's what I said. Crypto is sufficient but not necessary

[Heraclitus]

DP

[Heraclitus]

Math is possibly the most human endeavor of all.

Please elaborate on this.


In the space of all possible or even likely (AI) minds I'm having difficulty seeing humans as anywhere near being the most unique in any possible aptitude or appreciation of math I can think of.

Of all things that humans study, mathematics is probably the one about which this statement is the LEAST true.

For now I +1 this.

[DaShi]

You need to elaborate on this I'm afraid.

[Heraclitus]

You need to elaborate on this I'm afraid.

Well I think that for practical reasons humans are likely to build a AI or a human built AI that self optimizes will be much better at doing math or is more likely to enjoy it/appreciate it than most humans are.

I actually think that in the spaces of all implementable AIs human minds would suck very badly on whatever criteria that humans are supposed to excel at or be unique that caused KH to call Math the most human endevaour.


Calling math the most human endeavour is like calling going really really fast the most Hawkish endeavour. Even in a world with no other faster birds or artificial constructs like aircraft or high speed trains would one after looking at the Hawk really come to such a conclusion?

And would one looking at the human animal today come to the conculsion that math is the most human endeavour?

[DaShi]

No, I was just making fun of you repeating yourself. I really don't care about your nonsense. But that's it, isn't it? You're so desperate that you'll take anything as an excuse to go on one of your silly rants.

[Al B. Sure!]

No, I was just making fun of you repeating yourself. I really don't care about your nonsense. But that's it, isn't it? You're so desperate that you'll take anything as an excuse to go on one of your silly rants.

DaShi, Hera is right.

Why is math 'the most human endeavor'?

Why not music, for example?

[DaShi]

Music is math.

[Al B. Sure!]

Music is math.

Now. Not in the past. Or at least it wasn't seen as such or treated as such, Plato notwithstanding.

How about literature if it makes you feel better?

[DaShi]

Neither were many mathematical fields: econ, statistics, physics, biology.

Music has always been rather mathematical. It was intuitively so. Yes, eventually, it became formally so. But music, itself, is still music.

[Al B. Sure!]

Neither were many mathematical fields: econ, statistics, physics, biology

Mathematics was used to characterize observations of those complex phenomena, such as the interactions within a marketplace. That doesn't mean economics IS math, just that math is used to describe it.

[DaShi]

But econ is math. It's about placing a quantifiable value on different things. It's very human.

[Al B. Sure!]

But econ is math. It's about placing a quantifiable value on different things. It's very human.

Karl Popper and Robert Heilbroner would probably disagree with you there. As would Keynes:

It is a great fault of symbolic pseudo-mathematical methods of formalising a system of economic analysis … that they expressly assume strict independence between the factors involved and lose their cogency and authority if this hypothesis is disallowed; whereas, in ordinary discourse, where we are not blindly manipulating and know all the time what we are doing and what the words mean, we can keep ‘at the back of our heads’ the necessary reserves and qualifications and the adjustments which we shall have to make later on, in a way in which we cannot keep complicated partial differentials ‘at the back’ of several pages of algebra which assume they all vanish. Too large a proportion of recent ‘mathematical’ economics are merely concoctions, as imprecise as the initial assumptions they rest on, which allow the author to lose sight of the complexities and interdependencies of the real world in a maze of pretentious and unhelpful symbols.

I could contend that economics is truly psychology and the recent re-direction of economic study to areas such a behavioral economics would support that idea.

Math is just the tool used by economists to describe human interaction.