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That's surprising. Mathematicians generally are not very good at calculations and it always seemed to me that doing calculations fast is quite different from ma
by effie 11y ago
That's surprising. Mathematicians generally are not very good at calculations and it always seemed to me that doing calculations fast is quite different from mathematicians do and need.
- Someone 11y agoBack in the time of Gauss, mathematicians needed logarithm tables, and the only ones they trusted making them where mathematicians. So, mathematicians computed logarithms 'in their spare time' For example, Gauss actually spent time to write a review of a table of logarithms (http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1851AN.....32..181G/0000095.000.html http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1851AN.....32..181G...). He also had to compute prime numbers so that he could study their properties. (http://science.larouchepac.com/gauss/ceres/InterimII/Arithmetic/Primes/Primes.html http://science.larouchepac.com/gauss/ceres/InterimII/Arithme... claims he extended a table listing all primes up to 10,009 but never got as far as a million, but he must have spent lots of time on calculations we now call mundane
- reagency 11y agoThis is a myth. Mathematicians are excellent at calculations, relative to the general population. They know many algorithms and notice patterns (like "Common core"). They just aren't usually the savants that multiply many diot numbers. Much of advanced mathematics does involved laborious calculations. They are just on more sophisticated domains than integer arithmetic.