
Is Math a Young Man's Game? (2003) - danso
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/do_the_math/2003/05/is_math_a_young_mans_game.html
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acangiano
(2003). I have a simple theory. Math is not a young man's game, but math at
these levels is extremely demanding and all consuming of one's mind. As you
get older life gets more complicated, you get a wife, kids, dog, etc. Your
mind is no longer focused on one thing and one thing only. So it's
exceptionally rare to see someone with a normal life do extraordinary
discovery in mathematics past a certain age. Paul Erdős is often mentioned as
a counterexample to the young mathematician. Yet, Erdős pretty much lived for
mathematics and didn't really have a set place let alone a normal life with
wife and kids. I'm not saying that this is the only contributing factor, but
I'm willing to bet it's a big one.

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skc
The thing I find fascinating about both this article and now your comment is
that regardless of who's game it is, it seems to be taken as fact that it's a
MANS game. You said "you get a wife"...I suppose history isn't littered with
too many breakthrough female mathematicians.

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j2kun
Not many, but a few. Gender aside, nobody would think of Emmy Noether as
anything less than one of the greatest mathematicians who ever lived.

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claudius
Unless, of course, you consider her a physicist and those as less than
mathematicians…

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magicalist
I'll happily look down on applied mathematics, but classifying Emmy Noether as
only a physicist would be ridiculous, as a large part of her life's work was
indeed pure mathematics. I can't imagine the abuse of history needed to assert
otherwise.

And remember, even Hardy, most famous of the Purists, often slummed it with
(hold your nose) physicists and on a few occasions even with (the horror)
_biologists_.

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wulczer
[http://xkcd.com/447/](http://xkcd.com/447/)

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morganherlocker
About 6 months ago I began writing a library[1] that focuses on topology (much
of what was discussed in the article) and geospatial stats. I am by no means a
math genius, and my library does nothing too novel from a mathematical
perspective. Still, it has been nearly all consuming to grok the immense
amount of math that goes into this sort of thing. I can only imagine the
creative energy it must have taken to actually design these algorithms from
scratch.

[1]
[https://github.com/morganherlocker/turf](https://github.com/morganherlocker/turf)

~~~
Someone
As far as I can tell, your library does topo_graphy_, not topo_logy_. Topology
ignores such things as corners, distances, and convexity. That makes it hard
to combine with GIS systems.

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nathancahill
What? Everything about this comment is wrong.

> "Topology ignores such things as corners, distances, and convexity."

No, that's what topology is.

> "That makes it hard to combine with GIS systems."

No, GIS systems rely heavily on topology. Here are two definitions:

Topology: 1. the study of geometric properties and spatial relations
unaffected by the continuous change of shape or size of figures.

Topography: 1. the arrangement of the natural and artificial physical features
of an area.

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zodiac
The code samples used to demonstrate that library loads a trees.geojson file
with features like 'oak' and 'maple', so I think he definitely meant
'topography'. What makes you say it's a topology library?

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nathancahill
See the authors comment above. The library does do a lot more than topology,
but the see the sections titled: joins, measurement and transformation. These
are all topological functions.

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j2kun
Measurement is not topological.

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moocowduckquack
Maths is a game for anyone with the inclination to play.
[http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/05/16/1206569109.abst...](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/05/16/1206569109.abstract)

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Cyph0n
I don't get it. What's so special about the link?

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noelwelsh
The authors are 65 and 90 years old.

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Cyph0n
Similarly, I believe, due to the vast amount of information accumulated in all
different fields in the last century or so, polymaths have simply ceased to
exist. The last true polymath I know of was John von Neumann. I guess it just
can't be done anymore.

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gdubs
I'd put Alan Kay forward as a living polymath. It's a shame that research has
become siloed -- so many great discoveries came about because someone had
insights perpendicular to their field.

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claudius
Are you talking about Alan Kay as in
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Kay](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Kay)
? He doesn’t seem to have made any major contributions to physics,
mathematics, the natural sciences or basically any other field, apart from
software engineering.

~~~
gdubs
Polymath needn't mean 'makes major contributions to multiple fields' (though,
of course it, it can.) It means someone has deep knowledge across a wide array
of subjects, and typically draws inspiration from fields which are orthogonal
to their primary field of interest. In Kay's case, it's applying the concepts
of biology, genetics, mathematics, and architecture, to computer science, to
create Object Oriented Programming.

A major breakthrough in his primary field (computer science) came about
because of a wide (rather than narrow) field of study.

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analog31
In my view the simple explanation that there's more to learn before reaching
the cutting edge seems credible.

Biology is another area. I live in a town where there's a lot of biology
research, and there are start-up businesses, but they aren't formed by kids
who skipped college to get rich. Instead, the typical start-up founder could
be anywhere from 40 to 60. It takes a long time to learn biology.

Another possibility to consider is that math research takes more time now
because it resembles more of a search than an inventive process. If proof is
computer-aided, for instance, then an Edisonian approach could be applied to
finding a proof for a theorem (or at least, finding important steps),
resulting in discovery of proofs being a matter of time, even for the most
brilliant mathematician.

(edited for spelling)

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j2kun
Make no mistake, math research is very much an inventive process.

In particular, it's much more than just proving theorems. Mathematicians need
to come up with ideas worth investigating, and that (in addition to writing
proofs) often requires creativity.

~~~
analog31
Absolutely, and thanks for clarifying. My thought is simply that the
creativity has evolved towards work that takes longer to reach fruition.

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karmicthreat
I've thought about this for the last few months. I'm in my 30's and never
really cared about math until the last couple years. I'm discovering that it
has become somewhat easier now for me to understand and learn new math. I had
the usual engineering calc set and hated it. But now that I actually have some
goals associated with it I have been able to make progress. I've been
particularly interested in ASR and AI/ML. I was deficient in the math needed
for it but now I'm getting up to speed rapidly. I think the key is to have had
some in-depth exposure to math earlier in life though.

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dominotw
[http://mathoverflow.net/questions/25630/major-
mathematical-a...](http://mathoverflow.net/questions/25630/major-mathematical-
advances-past-age-fifty)

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ergoproxy
I think ageism is implicit in modern Western culture. The Fields Medal has
ageism built right into it: "a prize awarded to two, three, or four
mathematicians _not over 40 years of age_." Source:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fields_Medal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fields_Medal)

However, skimming down the list of Abel Prize winners, those guys are no
spring chickens, and do great work in mathematics well into their senior
years.

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leobelle
Everything in this article is about youth, not being male, so I don't get why
they chose to put "Man" in the title. Are there not any young women born as
genius?

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moistgorilla
He is referencing a quote by G.H. Harding "No mathematician should ever allow
himself to forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a
young man's game." Try reading the article before getting insulted.

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leobelle
I didn't know that, thanks.

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serf
Erdos said no.

