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This reminds me of story I heard about a pure math PhD student who wrote a deep proof for their dissertation. Unfortunately, they relied on certain math shortcu
by akeck 10y ago
This reminds me of story I heard about a pure math PhD student who wrote a deep proof for their dissertation. Unfortunately, they relied on certain math shortcuts that only work in a physics context. Their advisor didn't catch it, and I recall it ended badly for both the student and the advisor.
- heimatau 10y agoThat sounds bizarre. Pure Math is more theoretical and has less limitations than that of Theoretical Physics. Maybe this person you knew just went down the wrong path and should've focused on Theoretical Physics and not math.
- thanatropism 10y agoIf I understand the parent comment correctly, this is the advanced version of "proofs" of propositions in economics that just assume that dy/dx is defined in such a way that dy/dz = (dy/dx)(dx/dz). A mathematician would say "Let y: U\to V where U,V are open subsets of R^k and y\in C^1 (or C^\infty). Then..." and define clearly what's a function, what's a variable/number/vector and so forth.