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Mathematicians Are Overselling the Idea That “Math Is Everywhere”

37 points by jimsojim 10y ago

amelius 10y ago
I think they should quantify that statement :)
Smaug123 10y ago
Statistics and trial design is something strongly mathematical that almost no-one understands and yet is vitally important to decision-making in the modern world. One need only look to the Daily Mail for evidence of this: every few days they scream that SOMETHING ELSE CAUSES CANCER based on a study which shows nothing of the sort. I imagine people actually change their behaviour based on this kind of fake "science", and given an intuitive understanding of stats, it ought to have much less power to sway people. (See also: an offshoot of the Daily Mail Oncology Ontology, https://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/ https://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/ )
Kenji 10y ago
> An article, written on a keyboard with keys measured to fit in their place. > Transmitted to the computer using error detecting codes (in USB) > Being run through a CPU that essentially performs arithmetic, comparisons and branches. > Being processed by a word processor that has been compiled in one of many of the highly mathematical languages that run on our computers. > Written onto a disk with error detecting codes. > Sent over the internet with error detecting codes. > Written into a database that probably bases on relational algebra. > I open the article and everything happens in reverse on my computer so I can view it. And it claims maths is not everywhere. I just have to laugh. We have to recognize that elite mathematics today, while much more inclusive than it was one or five or fifty centuries ago, remains a discipline that vests special authority in those who, by virtue of gender, race, and class, are often already among our society’s most powerful. No, we do not. This is a factually false statement. We have to recognize that maths is open to everyone who is determined enough and has access to the internet or a library and that tribalism like this brings us nowhere. Anyone can participate in elite mathematics. If you come up with a proof for the Riemann hypothesis, go ahead and publish it! Nobody cares about your background if your work is good. Mathematics is blind to gender, race and class.
- davidy123 10y ago
  Do you think it's a reasonable strategy for an average person with daily struggles to put all their effort into coming up with a proof for the Riemann hypothesis?
  - sooheon 10y ago
    Yes, some people by virtue of their completely average mediocrity can't excel. But isn't this the case for every field? Why is that mathematics' problem?
    - davidy123 10y ago
      It's not mathematics' "problem." But it is a problem for people who may or may not be "average mediocrity" and can't drop everything to focus on this topic.
      - macspoofing 10y ago
        But you can say that about anything! Meaningfully contributing to any area (from academia, to sports, to Sunday bake sales) requires time commitments not everyone has. In most cases there may also be a requirement for some minimum level of knowledge, experience or skill. Welcome to life.
        nzp 10y ago
        You're right in that it can be said about almost anything, but it's not about time. If you're born into poverty, you can have all the time in the world, but you'll find it extremely hard to get proper education before you even get a chance to put some time into it. In other words, to even get a chance to commit time to something like mathematics at the level we're talking about, there are hard practical social and economic preconditions which have nothing to do with one's abilities, or even the field of endeavor as such. The article just conflates the field itself with these wider socio-economic conditions, constructs a weird argument out of the confusion, and comes out really bad.
yaps8 10y ago
I would agree with the general statement that mathematics has not been the most inclusive field (though it's getting better) and has been reserved to "elites", but I don't understand how it can be linked to statements like "math is everywhere". His conclusions states: "If math were really everywhere, it would already belong to everyone equally. But when it comes to accessing and supporting math, there is much work to be done. Math isn’t everywhere." I guess the same might be told for art or history ; they are everywhere but artists and historians are not and becoming one of them is difficult.
- ihaveahadron 10y ago
  Pretty much everyone knows what 1+1 is, which is mathematics. So math is not reserved for the elite. You fail elementary logic in your first sentence. You should probably be embarrassed at the fact that if you don't know elementary logic, your intermediate and advanced logic isn't looking good.
- gus_massa 10y ago
  By this standard, surgeons are elitist too. Try buying a green scrub and showing up in the operating room to cut someone ... Medicine is not everywhere.
jasode 10y ago
That was a strange article to read. As I parsed his words, it seemed like Michael J. Barany is responding to someone else's essay or policy opinion but we don't know who or what it is. If we had that, it would fill in the blanks of what he's arguing against. For example, he mentions "math" repeatedly but doesn't put boundaries around it. Is he talking about Algebra not being everywhere? Or Calculus is not necessary for everyone? Well, if you magnify the photo at the top of the article, you'll see books such as: + number theory + theory finite elements + topology + Navier-Stokes equation It's possible that the photo was a random clipart but it does seem to be the type of "math" he's talking about. Therefore, "math isn't everywhere" should be translated as "advanced university math isn't everywhere". So yes, it seems reasonable that we don't have to convince every part of society that they must learn to derive public key cryptography from first principles of number theory. But the question is, who was pushing that agenda? Because of my tech background, my first pass at his essay made me think it was a variation of arguing against the "coding is for everyone -- everyone should learn programming". However, I don't think Barany's opinion about math is an equivalent analogy.
- catnaroek 10y ago
  If anything, math should be for everyone at least as much as programming is. If only to reduce the amount of crap code evidently written without regard for the basics of computing science (which is effectively applied math).
- kaitai 10y ago
  That's what I don't get about the article, and some other comments address this as well. Fluid flow is everywhere, whether we have flush toilets or throw a bucket into a gutter somewhere! The statements "differential equations exist that describe fluid flow in certain contexts" and "all people can write down Navier-Stokes on command" are two versions of "math is everywhere". Mathematicians mean the first and this author basically discusses the second, which no mathematician ever would say. Straw man indeed. I too would like to know what/who Barany might be arguing against; maybe it would clarify the article.
ashark 10y ago
Especially true if we exclude stuff that's "not what math really is" when we lament how bad the teaching of mathematics is, like applying known formulas, gaining utility from knowing one's times tables, doing mental math with fractions or percentages, and so on.
greydius 10y ago
Math is one of those things that you'll see everywhere if you're looking for it. So its not that the mathematicians are lying, just that they have a biased perspective.
- lcnmrn 10y ago
  It’s a figure of speech. Math is everywhere, but not everyone have access to it. So math isn’t actually everywhere.
  - greydius 10y ago
    That's my point. The real question is whether "having access to it" is of value to people. I tend to say yes because I love knowledge and take any opportunity I can to better understand the universe I am part of. But not everyone feels this way.
  - samastur 10y ago
    That's an odd argument to make. It would be like saying that printed word is not everywhere if you are illiterate (or just not familiar with society's alphabet). I see math similar to many other types of knowledge. You can get by with fairly little, but the more you know, more often you will recognize opportunities to use it.
tokenadult 10y ago
I looked up the author's profile as a graduate student of history at Princeton. https://history.princeton.edu/people/michael-j-barany https://history.princeton.edu/people/michael-j-barany I'm troubled that a Princeton history student can write about a worldwide phenomenon with so little reference to non-Western cultures. (This is a pet issue of mine, as I am an American who lived in east Asia for years after studying Chinese and sinology.) I don't think he has looked at development economics and the history of popular attitudes toward economics enough to understand how important basic understanding of mathematics is. In other words, I disagree with the conclusion of his article, summed up in the last paragraph. "Imagining math to be everywhere makes it all too easy to ignore the very real politics of who gets to be part of the mathematical elite that really count—for technology, security, and economics, for the last war and the next one. Instead, if we see that this kind of mathematics has historically been built by and for the very few, we are called to ask who gets to be part of that few and what are the responsibilities that come with their expertise. We have to recognize that elite mathematics today, while much more inclusive than it was one or five or fifty centuries ago, remains a discipline that vests special authority in those who, by virtue of gender, race, and class, are often already among our society’s most powerful. If math were really everywhere, it would already belong to everyone equally. But when it comes to accessing and supporting math, there is much work to be done. Math isn’t everywhere."
- adrianN 10y ago
  Wow, that conclusion is crap. Mathematics is one of the most open fields of science. There are excellent free resources for learning math, even cutting edge research is usually easily found for free, the scientists are very open to sharing ideas. Anyone who has the necessary talent can learn any part of Mathematics they fancy.
  - empath75 10y ago
    He's not comparing math to other academic fields, he's comparing it to the most realistic alternative for most people, which is working a garbage McJob in which math isn't relevant to their lives at all. There's a lot of privilege involved in burying your head in books, no matter what the field, barring a few obsessive prodigies who live in public libraries and have extremely supportive parents.
jessaustin 10y ago
Ugh. I didn't need to be reminded of "Harrison Bergeron" before breakfast. Very poor satire, if that were the intention.
ivan_ah 10y ago
The author seems to conflate general math (arithmetic, variables, functions, basic modelling) with specialized math, used for advanced research topics like topology, number theory, etc. Apart from this conflation, the article is very confused, mixes lots of unrelated topics, and is hard to follow. Maybe a rewrite is in order? Or perhaps writing logical arguments, with clear ideas that make sense is also an elitist thing we should avoid?
Vexs 10y ago
I feel I should toss up XKCD's golden ratio overlays[1] but I think it's really a chicken or the egg kind of argument- did processes involuntarily use math to come to these arrangements, or did we apply math to understand them? [1]https://xkcd.com/spiral/ https://xkcd.com/spiral/
sevensor 10y ago
I think the author is deliberately conflating two interpretations of "Math is Everywhere." It's hard to argue that it isn't, when we talk about different fields of endeavor. Deep in any remunerative profession, from selling groceries to manufacturing semiconductors, there are quantitative models, and it helps to know at least trigonometry and calculus, if not differential equations, to understand them. But the author isn't actually talking about quantitative models -- this is the bait-and-switch -- he's actually talking about dramatically uneven mathematical education and widespread innumeracy.
- jib 10y ago
  Yeah it is a straw man from what I can see. "Math can be used to model just about everything, and so can make a meaningful contribution to almost every endeavour" is a completely different statement from "Everyone has access to learning math to do anything math-related they want". The second argument is not one I have heard people making, and if they make it I doubt they would express it as "Math is Everywhere". I have heard people make the first argument as "Math is Everywhere".
- pyrale 10y ago
  There is this, but the bait and switch actually has a justification in his mind : by publicly acknowledging that math is everywhere in the first and promoting this fact, we reinforce the extent to which innumeracy impacts those who suffer from it. This is a political opinion, of course, and not an assessment on the extent to which maths help people.
n00b101 10y ago
Would he also argue that physics is "not everywhere" since we are not all elite physicists?
ihaveahadron 10y ago
"Mathematics are everywhere" (which doesn't really say much/make sense anyway) does nothing to argue about why or what mathematics should be learned. The article loses the argument in the first paragraph. That's like saying "I'm smart because I have a have a degree." You're "smart" if your smart. You have a degree if you have a degree. The level of arguments in what is supposed to be "smart" arguments is embarrassing.
mathattack 10y ago
Strange - I don't know where to begin on this. Access to data, the tools to manipulate it, and the knowledge to understand it have never been more accessible. There is a growing understanding that stats is as important as calculus in the high school mathematics curriculum. Sure - getting a job as a tenured mathematics teacher is tough. Same as an NSA researcher. But it's crazy to say they have a monopoly on mathematics.
saskurambo 10y ago
Math and geometry are also used in symbolics sciences. I-king with binary math, Astrology and tarots use math symbols for explain many priciples. We find it in Pitagora, Platone, Plotino, Giordano Bruno
nprecup 10y ago
There is 'elite mathematics', just as there are in every other field. Should we come to the same conclusion for every other subject, just because there are a few gifted individuals who dominate their field? Yet, most math that is used frequently is not complicated and anyone can learn it (even calculus). The barriers to obtaining a high level education in mathematics and its related fields (there are too many to count) is less related to the education system and the complexity of the subject material, but more related to public policy and poverty. And hey, would you look at that, we can use statistics and math and our understanding of economics to help solve those too! I think the writer didn't have the interest in math in high school, had a bad experience, and chose to be a historian, as pointed out by tokenadult.
openasocket 10y ago
I feel like you s/Math/<any scientific discipline>/g and this article would still hold. Yes, the sciences and engineering, and pretty much every academic pursuit has been historically restricted to white men in the western world, but that doesn't have much bearing on the modern world. If anything, I feel mathematics is more open than many other STEM fields. I got my degree in mathematics, and I noticed the gender gap in classes was nonexistent. In the calculus and statistics and other classes which were required for engineers, the classroom distribution would definitely skew male. But in the pure math classes, like topology, abstract algebra, real analysis, etc that would only be taken by math majors, the gender distribution was 50-50. In several of my classes the women outnumbered the men. And this was also true of the faculty: 3/6 professors I took classes with were women.
kaitai 10y ago
I can take 15 3rd-graders out on a walk and give them an interactive math lecture about symmetry, fractals, dimension, non-Euclidean geometries, and other mathematical topics on any day. To do this I’d walk them past a brick wall and some buildings, we’d look at some ants and the directions they can go and we’d jump up and down to be different than the ants, we’d use the sidewalk and talk about the globe, we’d find some leaves and look at the veins in the leaves. Math is certainly everywhere, and that’s what we mean when we say it. When it comes to math that influences public policy, we're often talking about actuarial mathematics. It’s not “elite”: it's an area of complicated applications that will determine whether our economy will sink under health-care costs or not. Math for national security? Crypto, and since good implementation of the math ideas is at least as important as the ideas, I don’t think it’s as elite as he makes out. Gromov-Witten theory is built for the few. Elliptic cohomology is build for the few. Whittaker functions are built for the few, the elite, the more-likely-than-not Russian. This is what the NSF funds, among other math. But that doesn’t jibe with the intermittent discussion of policy and … economics?… attempted in the article. I don’t think this author has a point. The author doesn’t distinguish between math used in and for public policy and math funded by the taxpayer. The author is trying to argue that since people aren’t good at math it maybe doesn’t exist (?) (“If math were really everywhere, it would already belong to everyone equally.” What does this mean?) The author tries to address racial/social/class inequities in math education access but only sort of randomly, at the end, without discussing causes, effects, or mechanisms, and while ignoring the international face of mathematics and the mathematicians who exist today.
aarghh 10y ago
Hmm - a counterargument would be to substitute "literacy for "mathematics" in the argument; literacy was elitist in its core historically (and still is in certain societies, unfortunately) - does that imply that learning to read is irrelevant for most people?
haliax 10y ago
This article is riddled with poor reasoning. 1. The author's claim about "the politics of who gets to be a part of the mathematical elite" has almost nothing to do with the contention that "math is everywhere". 2. Math is everywhere. I make this claim by virtue of the facts that (1) you can, in any situation, ask questions like "how many?", "how much?", and "which one?" (which leads to encodings) and (2) Math is just our ordinary processes of reasoning, made rigorous and mechanized. Whether you're looking at someone's face, walking through the zoo, or cooking, there are underlying mathematical realities to be considered, if you're interested. 3. The author writes, "When we talk about math in public policy, especially the public’s investment in mathematical training and research, we are not talking about simple sums and measures." Except that, sums and measures and similar basic arithmetic are extremely relevant to making policy. When we talk about % growth targets, or inflation, or social security, back of the envelope arithmetic is just what you need to get an idea of what a policy actually does, or what it's results have been. 4. Examples in this article are cherry-picked and without supporting context: "Priests used astronomical calculations to mark the seasons and interpret divine will, and their special command of mathematics gave them power and privilege in their societies" But this is only true if mathematical prowess (rather than say, winning a lottery or being supposedly divinely annointed) was the key to joining the priesthood. Once accepted as a priest, what difference would it make whether you gave mathematically correct, or entirely nonsensical predictions to a crowd? 5. As another commenter writes "Mathematics is one of the most open fields of [S]cience". This is spot on. Existing free resources are really fantastic, and while you can make a completely valid point that not all children are given the relevant fundamental education to allow them to take advantage of that, the same argument applies to any field of education -- down to and including basic literacy. It makes no sense to lay the blame for this on mathematics. tl;dr: This article is a giant non-sequitur, chock-full of poor reasoning.
- saskurambo 10y ago
  Thinking is math. If thinking is put in relations different things this is math. With the dialetics of yin and yang we can compare and put in a relative relations everything. Yin and yang relation is the binary math of I Ching for example. All the rules of the Traditional Medicine Chinese for example can be demostrated with I Ching Math

37 points by jimsojim 10y ago

I think they should quantify that statement :)

Statistics and trial design is something strongly mathematical that almost no-one understands and yet is vitally important to decision-making in the modern world. One need only look to the Daily Mail for evidence of this: every few days they scream that SOMETHING ELSE CAUSES CANCER based on a study which shows nothing of the sort. I imagine people actually change their behaviour based on this kind of fake "science", and given an intuitive understanding of stats, it ought to have much less power to sway people. (See also: an offshoot of the Daily Mail Oncology Ontology, https://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/ https://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/ )

Kenji 10y ago

> An article, written on a keyboard with keys measured to fit in their place. > Transmitted to the computer using error detecting codes (in USB) > Being run through a CPU that essentially performs arithmetic, comparisons and branches. > Being processed by a word processor that has been compiled in one of many of the highly mathematical languages that run on our computers. > Written onto a disk with error detecting codes. > Sent over the internet with error detecting codes. > Written into a database that probably bases on relational algebra. > I open the article and everything happens in reverse on my computer so I can view it. And it claims maths is not everywhere. I just have to laugh. We have to recognize that elite mathematics today, while much more inclusive than it was one or five or fifty centuries ago, remains a discipline that vests special authority in those who, by virtue of gender, race, and class, are often already among our society’s most powerful. No, we do not. This is a factually false statement. We have to recognize that maths is open to everyone who is determined enough and has access to the internet or a library and that tribalism like this brings us nowhere. Anyone can participate in elite mathematics. If you come up with a proof for the Riemann hypothesis, go ahead and publish it! Nobody cares about your background if your work is good. Mathematics is blind to gender, race and class.

davidy123 10y ago
Do you think it's a reasonable strategy for an average person with daily struggles to put all their effort into coming up with a proof for the Riemann hypothesis?
- sooheon 10y ago
  Yes, some people by virtue of their completely average mediocrity can't excel. But isn't this the case for every field? Why is that mathematics' problem?
  - davidy123 10y ago
    It's not mathematics' "problem." But it is a problem for people who may or may not be "average mediocrity" and can't drop everything to focus on this topic.
    - macspoofing 10y ago
      But you can say that about anything! Meaningfully contributing to any area (from academia, to sports, to Sunday bake sales) requires time commitments not everyone has. In most cases there may also be a requirement for some minimum level of knowledge, experience or skill. Welcome to life.
      - nzp 10y ago
        You're right in that it can be said about almost anything, but it's not about time. If you're born into poverty, you can have all the time in the world, but you'll find it extremely hard to get proper education before you even get a chance to put some time into it. In other words, to even get a chance to commit time to something like mathematics at the level we're talking about, there are hard practical social and economic preconditions which have nothing to do with one's abilities, or even the field of endeavor as such. The article just conflates the field itself with these wider socio-economic conditions, constructs a weird argument out of the confusion, and comes out really bad.

yaps8 10y ago

I would agree with the general statement that mathematics has not been the most inclusive field (though it's getting better) and has been reserved to "elites", but I don't understand how it can be linked to statements like "math is everywhere". His conclusions states: "If math were really everywhere, it would already belong to everyone equally. But when it comes to accessing and supporting math, there is much work to be done. Math isn’t everywhere." I guess the same might be told for art or history ; they are everywhere but artists and historians are not and becoming one of them is difficult.

ihaveahadron 10y ago
Pretty much everyone knows what 1+1 is, which is mathematics. So math is not reserved for the elite. You fail elementary logic in your first sentence. You should probably be embarrassed at the fact that if you don't know elementary logic, your intermediate and advanced logic isn't looking good.
gus_massa 10y ago
By this standard, surgeons are elitist too. Try buying a green scrub and showing up in the operating room to cut someone ... Medicine is not everywhere.

jasode 10y ago

That was a strange article to read. As I parsed his words, it seemed like Michael J. Barany is responding to someone else's essay or policy opinion but we don't know who or what it is. If we had that, it would fill in the blanks of what he's arguing against. For example, he mentions "math" repeatedly but doesn't put boundaries around it. Is he talking about Algebra not being everywhere? Or Calculus is not necessary for everyone? Well, if you magnify the photo at the top of the article, you'll see books such as: + number theory + theory finite elements + topology + Navier-Stokes equation It's possible that the photo was a random clipart but it does seem to be the type of "math" he's talking about. Therefore, "math isn't everywhere" should be translated as "advanced university math isn't everywhere". So yes, it seems reasonable that we don't have to convince every part of society that they must learn to derive public key cryptography from first principles of number theory. But the question is, who was pushing that agenda? Because of my tech background, my first pass at his essay made me think it was a variation of arguing against the "coding is for everyone -- everyone should learn programming". However, I don't think Barany's opinion about math is an equivalent analogy.

catnaroek 10y ago
If anything, math should be for everyone at least as much as programming is. If only to reduce the amount of crap code evidently written without regard for the basics of computing science (which is effectively applied math).
kaitai 10y ago
That's what I don't get about the article, and some other comments address this as well. Fluid flow is everywhere, whether we have flush toilets or throw a bucket into a gutter somewhere! The statements "differential equations exist that describe fluid flow in certain contexts" and "all people can write down Navier-Stokes on command" are two versions of "math is everywhere". Mathematicians mean the first and this author basically discusses the second, which no mathematician ever would say. Straw man indeed. I too would like to know what/who Barany might be arguing against; maybe it would clarify the article.

ashark 10y ago

Especially true if we exclude stuff that's "not what math really is" when we lament how bad the teaching of mathematics is, like applying known formulas, gaining utility from knowing one's times tables, doing mental math with fractions or percentages, and so on.

greydius 10y ago

Math is one of those things that you'll see everywhere if you're looking for it. So its not that the mathematicians are lying, just that they have a biased perspective.

lcnmrn 10y ago
It’s a figure of speech. Math is everywhere, but not everyone have access to it. So math isn’t actually everywhere.
- greydius 10y ago
  That's my point. The real question is whether "having access to it" is of value to people. I tend to say yes because I love knowledge and take any opportunity I can to better understand the universe I am part of. But not everyone feels this way.
- samastur 10y ago
  That's an odd argument to make. It would be like saying that printed word is not everywhere if you are illiterate (or just not familiar with society's alphabet). I see math similar to many other types of knowledge. You can get by with fairly little, but the more you know, more often you will recognize opportunities to use it.

tokenadult 10y ago

I looked up the author's profile as a graduate student of history at Princeton. https://history.princeton.edu/people/michael-j-barany https://history.princeton.edu/people/michael-j-barany I'm troubled that a Princeton history student can write about a worldwide phenomenon with so little reference to non-Western cultures. (This is a pet issue of mine, as I am an American who lived in east Asia for years after studying Chinese and sinology.) I don't think he has looked at development economics and the history of popular attitudes toward economics enough to understand how important basic understanding of mathematics is. In other words, I disagree with the conclusion of his article, summed up in the last paragraph. "Imagining math to be everywhere makes it all too easy to ignore the very real politics of who gets to be part of the mathematical elite that really count—for technology, security, and economics, for the last war and the next one. Instead, if we see that this kind of mathematics has historically been built by and for the very few, we are called to ask who gets to be part of that few and what are the responsibilities that come with their expertise. We have to recognize that elite mathematics today, while much more inclusive than it was one or five or fifty centuries ago, remains a discipline that vests special authority in those who, by virtue of gender, race, and class, are often already among our society’s most powerful. If math were really everywhere, it would already belong to everyone equally. But when it comes to accessing and supporting math, there is much work to be done. Math isn’t everywhere."

adrianN 10y ago
Wow, that conclusion is crap. Mathematics is one of the most open fields of science. There are excellent free resources for learning math, even cutting edge research is usually easily found for free, the scientists are very open to sharing ideas. Anyone who has the necessary talent can learn any part of Mathematics they fancy.
- empath75 10y ago
  He's not comparing math to other academic fields, he's comparing it to the most realistic alternative for most people, which is working a garbage McJob in which math isn't relevant to their lives at all. There's a lot of privilege involved in burying your head in books, no matter what the field, barring a few obsessive prodigies who live in public libraries and have extremely supportive parents.

jessaustin 10y ago

Ugh. I didn't need to be reminded of "Harrison Bergeron" before breakfast. Very poor satire, if that were the intention.

ivan_ah 10y ago

The author seems to conflate general math (arithmetic, variables, functions, basic modelling) with specialized math, used for advanced research topics like topology, number theory, etc. Apart from this conflation, the article is very confused, mixes lots of unrelated topics, and is hard to follow. Maybe a rewrite is in order? Or perhaps writing logical arguments, with clear ideas that make sense is also an elitist thing we should avoid?

Vexs 10y ago

I feel I should toss up XKCD's golden ratio overlays[1] but I think it's really a chicken or the egg kind of argument- did processes involuntarily use math to come to these arrangements, or did we apply math to understand them? [1]https://xkcd.com/spiral/ https://xkcd.com/spiral/

sevensor 10y ago

I think the author is deliberately conflating two interpretations of "Math is Everywhere." It's hard to argue that it isn't, when we talk about different fields of endeavor. Deep in any remunerative profession, from selling groceries to manufacturing semiconductors, there are quantitative models, and it helps to know at least trigonometry and calculus, if not differential equations, to understand them. But the author isn't actually talking about quantitative models -- this is the bait-and-switch -- he's actually talking about dramatically uneven mathematical education and widespread innumeracy.

jib 10y ago
Yeah it is a straw man from what I can see. "Math can be used to model just about everything, and so can make a meaningful contribution to almost every endeavour" is a completely different statement from "Everyone has access to learning math to do anything math-related they want". The second argument is not one I have heard people making, and if they make it I doubt they would express it as "Math is Everywhere". I have heard people make the first argument as "Math is Everywhere".
pyrale 10y ago
There is this, but the bait and switch actually has a justification in his mind : by publicly acknowledging that math is everywhere in the first and promoting this fact, we reinforce the extent to which innumeracy impacts those who suffer from it. This is a political opinion, of course, and not an assessment on the extent to which maths help people.

n00b101 10y ago

Would he also argue that physics is "not everywhere" since we are not all elite physicists?

ihaveahadron 10y ago

"Mathematics are everywhere" (which doesn't really say much/make sense anyway) does nothing to argue about why or what mathematics should be learned. The article loses the argument in the first paragraph. That's like saying "I'm smart because I have a have a degree." You're "smart" if your smart. You have a degree if you have a degree. The level of arguments in what is supposed to be "smart" arguments is embarrassing.

mathattack 10y ago

Strange - I don't know where to begin on this. Access to data, the tools to manipulate it, and the knowledge to understand it have never been more accessible. There is a growing understanding that stats is as important as calculus in the high school mathematics curriculum. Sure - getting a job as a tenured mathematics teacher is tough. Same as an NSA researcher. But it's crazy to say they have a monopoly on mathematics.

saskurambo 10y ago

Math and geometry are also used in symbolics sciences. I-king with binary math, Astrology and tarots use math symbols for explain many priciples. We find it in Pitagora, Platone, Plotino, Giordano Bruno

nprecup 10y ago

There is 'elite mathematics', just as there are in every other field. Should we come to the same conclusion for every other subject, just because there are a few gifted individuals who dominate their field? Yet, most math that is used frequently is not complicated and anyone can learn it (even calculus). The barriers to obtaining a high level education in mathematics and its related fields (there are too many to count) is less related to the education system and the complexity of the subject material, but more related to public policy and poverty. And hey, would you look at that, we can use statistics and math and our understanding of economics to help solve those too! I think the writer didn't have the interest in math in high school, had a bad experience, and chose to be a historian, as pointed out by tokenadult.

openasocket 10y ago

I feel like you s/Math/<any scientific discipline>/g and this article would still hold. Yes, the sciences and engineering, and pretty much every academic pursuit has been historically restricted to white men in the western world, but that doesn't have much bearing on the modern world. If anything, I feel mathematics is more open than many other STEM fields. I got my degree in mathematics, and I noticed the gender gap in classes was nonexistent. In the calculus and statistics and other classes which were required for engineers, the classroom distribution would definitely skew male. But in the pure math classes, like topology, abstract algebra, real analysis, etc that would only be taken by math majors, the gender distribution was 50-50. In several of my classes the women outnumbered the men. And this was also true of the faculty: 3/6 professors I took classes with were women.

kaitai 10y ago

I can take 15 3rd-graders out on a walk and give them an interactive math lecture about symmetry, fractals, dimension, non-Euclidean geometries, and other mathematical topics on any day. To do this I’d walk them past a brick wall and some buildings, we’d look at some ants and the directions they can go and we’d jump up and down to be different than the ants, we’d use the sidewalk and talk about the globe, we’d find some leaves and look at the veins in the leaves. Math is certainly everywhere, and that’s what we mean when we say it. When it comes to math that influences public policy, we're often talking about actuarial mathematics. It’s not “elite”: it's an area of complicated applications that will determine whether our economy will sink under health-care costs or not. Math for national security? Crypto, and since good implementation of the math ideas is at least as important as the ideas, I don’t think it’s as elite as he makes out. Gromov-Witten theory is built for the few. Elliptic cohomology is build for the few. Whittaker functions are built for the few, the elite, the more-likely-than-not Russian. This is what the NSF funds, among other math. But that doesn’t jibe with the intermittent discussion of policy and … economics?… attempted in the article. I don’t think this author has a point. The author doesn’t distinguish between math used in and for public policy and math funded by the taxpayer. The author is trying to argue that since people aren’t good at math it maybe doesn’t exist (?) (“If math were really everywhere, it would already belong to everyone equally.” What does this mean?) The author tries to address racial/social/class inequities in math education access but only sort of randomly, at the end, without discussing causes, effects, or mechanisms, and while ignoring the international face of mathematics and the mathematicians who exist today.

aarghh 10y ago

Hmm - a counterargument would be to substitute "literacy for "mathematics" in the argument; literacy was elitist in its core historically (and still is in certain societies, unfortunately) - does that imply that learning to read is irrelevant for most people?

haliax 10y ago

This article is riddled with poor reasoning. 1. The author's claim about "the politics of who gets to be a part of the mathematical elite" has almost nothing to do with the contention that "math is everywhere". 2. Math is everywhere. I make this claim by virtue of the facts that (1) you can, in any situation, ask questions like "how many?", "how much?", and "which one?" (which leads to encodings) and (2) Math is just our ordinary processes of reasoning, made rigorous and mechanized. Whether you're looking at someone's face, walking through the zoo, or cooking, there are underlying mathematical realities to be considered, if you're interested. 3. The author writes, "When we talk about math in public policy, especially the public’s investment in mathematical training and research, we are not talking about simple sums and measures." Except that, sums and measures and similar basic arithmetic are extremely relevant to making policy. When we talk about % growth targets, or inflation, or social security, back of the envelope arithmetic is just what you need to get an idea of what a policy actually does, or what it's results have been. 4. Examples in this article are cherry-picked and without supporting context: "Priests used astronomical calculations to mark the seasons and interpret divine will, and their special command of mathematics gave them power and privilege in their societies" But this is only true if mathematical prowess (rather than say, winning a lottery or being supposedly divinely annointed) was the key to joining the priesthood. Once accepted as a priest, what difference would it make whether you gave mathematically correct, or entirely nonsensical predictions to a crowd? 5. As another commenter writes "Mathematics is one of the most open fields of [S]cience". This is spot on. Existing free resources are really fantastic, and while you can make a completely valid point that not all children are given the relevant fundamental education to allow them to take advantage of that, the same argument applies to any field of education -- down to and including basic literacy. It makes no sense to lay the blame for this on mathematics. tl;dr: This article is a giant non-sequitur, chock-full of poor reasoning.

saskurambo 10y ago
Thinking is math. If thinking is put in relations different things this is math. With the dialetics of yin and yang we can compare and put in a relative relations everything. Yin and yang relation is the binary math of I Ching for example. All the rules of the Traditional Medicine Chinese for example can be demostrated with I Ching Math