Mathematicians are shitty communicators who like feeling special because they can understand their obscure language.
I’m a programmer and in this field there have been tons of books published, conference talks, and heated internet arguments about how to make your code as readable as possible: formatting, function length, naming of variables and functions, keeping number of cross references low, how to document intent, etc. Mathematicians do none of that - it’s all single-character names (preferably from the Greek alphabet to complicate it further) and they rarely communicate intent before throwing formulas at you. You can easily tell when a mathematician has written code because it’s typically hot garbage in terms of readability.
If I had online resources growing up math would be easy, I relearned math weekly in college because it flowed out my brain, growing up having to learn off teachers/textbooks was always confusing and my parents were neve helpful. Also common thing is you just dont see how you’ll use math in your day to day (even tho it ends up being useful everywhere for anything)
I think ppl would like math more if they learned with better visuals, maybe blender will be used in the classroom to visualize expressions and formulas in the future, that is what made me like math.
I worked with a physicist who wrote code that was so unreadable, it actually made me laugh. He would often include his initials in variable names, even though he was pretty much the only person working in the code base. His functions usually included a flags argument, which was a list of (usually undocumented) integers that you could pass in to change the behavior of the function. For example, one time one of his functions wasn’t giving the expected output, so I asked him and he replied “oh did you put 32 in the flags list?” Like he just didn’t understand that you shouldn’t need to read the entire contents of a function in order to understand how to use it.
Inb4 “well why didn’t you help him?” he was in his 70s and vehemently refused any advice.
His functions usually included a flags argument, which was a list of (usually undocumented) integers that you could pass in to change the behavior of the function.
To be fair, expression tend to be way, way smaller than a codebase. The math community was never forced to improve in the same way. Actually, the symbols were themselves an innovation; in ancient Greece they just had to try and explain that shit in long, tortured natural language sentences.
I really, really hope nobody feels like I’m trying to be unclear with them. I know I sometimes am, though.
This is why computer programmers and engineers have a hard time with math. Most people never even reach the levels where mathematicians matter.
Math is behind what everyone uses, but not in a way that they can change it. Many people don’t need more than basic algebra. The most complicated math most people will every do is an interest rate calculation.
It would be a bit like teaching art history to a computer scientist. Beyond a basic level they are going to have trouble spotting relevant applications, much less advanced topics.
Mathematicians are shitty communicators who like feeling special because they can understand their obscure language.
I’m a programmer and in this field there have been tons of books published, conference talks, and heated internet arguments about how to make your code as readable as possible: formatting, function length, naming of variables and functions, keeping number of cross references low, how to document intent, etc. Mathematicians do none of that - it’s all single-character names (preferably from the Greek alphabet to complicate it further) and they rarely communicate intent before throwing formulas at you. You can easily tell when a mathematician has written code because it’s typically hot garbage in terms of readability.
If I had online resources growing up math would be easy, I relearned math weekly in college because it flowed out my brain, growing up having to learn off teachers/textbooks was always confusing and my parents were neve helpful. Also common thing is you just dont see how you’ll use math in your day to day (even tho it ends up being useful everywhere for anything)
I think ppl would like math more if they learned with better visuals, maybe blender will be used in the classroom to visualize expressions and formulas in the future, that is what made me like math.
I feel personally attacked lol
I worked with a physicist who wrote code that was so unreadable, it actually made me laugh. He would often include his initials in variable names, even though he was pretty much the only person working in the code base. His functions usually included a
flagsargument, which was a list of (usually undocumented) integers that you could pass in to change the behavior of the function. For example, one time one of his functions wasn’t giving the expected output, so I asked him and he replied “oh did you put 32 in the flags list?” Like he just didn’t understand that you shouldn’t need to read the entire contents of a function in order to understand how to use it.Inb4 “well why didn’t you help him?” he was in his 70s and vehemently refused any advice.
This hurt to read
Code signing!
To be fair, expression tend to be way, way smaller than a codebase. The math community was never forced to improve in the same way. Actually, the symbols were themselves an innovation; in ancient Greece they just had to try and explain that shit in long, tortured natural language sentences.
I really, really hope nobody feels like I’m trying to be unclear with them. I know I sometimes am, though.
This is why computer programmers and engineers have a hard time with math. Most people never even reach the levels where mathematicians matter.
Math is behind what everyone uses, but not in a way that they can change it. Many people don’t need more than basic algebra. The most complicated math most people will every do is an interest rate calculation.
It would be a bit like teaching art history to a computer scientist. Beyond a basic level they are going to have trouble spotting relevant applications, much less advanced topics.
“The demonstration is trivial and left to the reader” or any variation of that. Fuck you, do the fucking demonstration.
Got this so much in my engineering courses.