Quoted without comment
January 28th, 2007 by WaltCommenter tdstephens3 in this thread at Mathematics Under the Microscope:
Mathematicians aren’t born from school math competitions in the same way that poets do not grow out of spelling bees.
Commenter tdstephens3 in this thread at Mathematics Under the Microscope:
Mathematicians aren’t born from school math competitions in the same way that poets do not grow out of spelling bees.
January 28th, 2007 at 11:31 pm
However Perelman had grown out of school math competitions and mathematical olympiads…
January 29th, 2007 at 1:24 am
Also Terence Tao is famous for his history with and later engagement for the mathematical olympiads.
January 29th, 2007 at 1:49 am
I do not feel that the proportion set in the comment by tdstephens3 is well balanced. I would formulate it in a bit more careful way:
Mathematicians aren’t born from log table memorizing competitions in the same way that poets do not grow out of spelling bees.
Basically, spelling bees have nothing to do with poetry, while a decent maths competition problem most definitely belongs to mathematics.
And maths competitions are not spelling bees!
January 31st, 2007 at 8:29 am
I know this a minority opinion, but I don’t really like the idea of math competitions. I always refused to do things like the Putnam, for example. I don’t mind competition in general, but I dislike it for things of intrinsic importance.
January 31st, 2007 at 1:55 pm
I suppose that I would like them more if I were any good at them, but I am in Walt “adjoint functors are bunk” Pohl’s camp on this one.
February 2nd, 2007 at 11:16 am
As the owner of a rare double B.S. in Mathematics and English Literature from Caltech (1973), this notion struck home.
Not as painfully, I should add, as the time that I was at the “10 items or less” line at a Pasadena grocery store, with roughly 17 items plunked down near the cash register. I was wearing a Caltech sweatshirt.
“Are you an English Major who can’t count,” asked the cashier, “or a Math major who can’t read?”
February 2nd, 2007 at 12:32 pm
Perhaps a response should be that as a Math major you understand the difference between discrete and continuous data, so as an English major you know that “10 items or less” is poor English.
(see Bad marks for Tesco near the bottom of http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1971445,00.html and Pedants’ revolt near the bottom of http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1971445,00.html )
February 2nd, 2007 at 10:26 pm
Jonathan: That’s like the greatest story ever. Clearly you were destined to double major solely so someone could say that to you someday. I see now that everything is foreordained.
February 4th, 2007 at 9:31 pm
…the context…results oriented programs will not “create” more mathematicians/scientists. The position of scientist requires far more than good test scores. Please pick up on this, the culture of the scientist is unique and poorly understood.