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You're probably wrong about the last part (I doubt there's a statistically significant difference between mathematicians and other people in regards to life res

by edanm 7y ago

You're probably wrong about the last part (I doubt there's a statistically significant difference between mathematicians and other people in regards to life responsibilities, the big ones obviously being having children). About the first part, I don't think mathematicians specifically get so many life responsibilities - I think most people do most of their "learning" in their 20s, and most of the execution of that learning in their 30s and onwards. Research mathematicians are a bit different in that, like most academics, their serious intellectual work which pushes the frontier and gets them career credit is of the same kind of learning/intellectual work. E.g. compare to programmers- most will learn to program in their 20s, pick up a few languages/technologies, then spend a big chunk of their career with those.

BurningFrog 7y ago
The original assertion is that mathematicians do their best work in their 20s. Not learning. Most math discoveries we know were made by guys under 25! This makes mathematics an outlier scientific field, so if your explanation is "life responsibilities", you have to explain why mathematicians have more life responsibilities than others. So my money is on some brain development thing. Not that I have any better argument than "what else could it be?".
- learc83 7y ago
  The actual age difference it's not all that large compared to other disciplines. > In a study of nearly 2,000 famous scientists throughout history, he found that mathematicians were the youngest when they made their first important contribution. The average age at which they accomplished something important enough to land in history books was 27.3. By contrast, biologists were 29.4 years old, physicists were 29.7, and chemists were 30.5. >mathematicians make their best research contributions (which he defined as the ones mentioned most often by historians and biographers in reference books) at what many might consider doddering old age: 38.8. That age is very similar to those he found in other sciences: 40.5 in biology, 38.2 in physics, and 38.0 in chemistry Math is also a bit unusual compared to most of other disciplines in that math dissertations are often written very quickly and you don't need months or years of studies/experiments to support a thesis. That could easily explain the 2 year gap between mathematicians and biologists noted above. http://www.massey.ac.nz/~rmclachl/overthehill.html http://www.massey.ac.nz/~rmclachl/overthehill.html
  - BurningFrog 7y ago
    Thanks so much for injecting facts into this, and changing my view a bit! My, now less certain views, were based on some article I read years ago where the peak ages for various fields were listed, and were quite further spread out. I especially remember that historians peak in their 60s! Like someone says in your article "This myth, if you wish to call it a myth, is so prevalent that it's quite probable that there's some truth to it", but I'm now far less certain and flippant about. Thanks again!
    - philwelch 7y ago
      > I especially remember that historians peak in their 60s! I bet when you're old enough that you can see firsthand how perceptions of the same events change over time, you get a hell of a lot better at recognizing that in history.
  - philwelch 7y ago
    Many prominent mathematicians throughout history fit this pattern, but largely because they lived in different times. Mathematics builds on itself: 200-300 years ago, there was less mathematics to build on, so you could get to the frontiers a lot faster. Also, academic fields were less delineated--not only was Newton both a mathematician and a physicist at a time when the two weren't distinct fields and physics barely existed, but he also lived in a world where wasting the entire rest of his life studying Bible codes and nurturing personal feuds seemed like a reasonable idea. There are also confirmation and sample biases involved. Everyone hears about Terence Tao because Terence Tao's story is remarkable. All the 38-year-old mathematicians who are making those research contributions are normal, and hence their stories aren't interesting.

by edanm 7y ago

BurningFrog 7y ago

The original assertion is that mathematicians do their best work in their 20s. Not learning. Most math discoveries we know were made by guys under 25! This makes mathematics an outlier scientific field, so if your explanation is "life responsibilities", you have to explain why mathematicians have more life responsibilities than others. So my money is on some brain development thing. Not that I have any better argument than "what else could it be?".

learc83 7y ago
The actual age difference it's not all that large compared to other disciplines. > In a study of nearly 2,000 famous scientists throughout history, he found that mathematicians were the youngest when they made their first important contribution. The average age at which they accomplished something important enough to land in history books was 27.3. By contrast, biologists were 29.4 years old, physicists were 29.7, and chemists were 30.5. >mathematicians make their best research contributions (which he defined as the ones mentioned most often by historians and biographers in reference books) at what many might consider doddering old age: 38.8. That age is very similar to those he found in other sciences: 40.5 in biology, 38.2 in physics, and 38.0 in chemistry Math is also a bit unusual compared to most of other disciplines in that math dissertations are often written very quickly and you don't need months or years of studies/experiments to support a thesis. That could easily explain the 2 year gap between mathematicians and biologists noted above. http://www.massey.ac.nz/~rmclachl/overthehill.html http://www.massey.ac.nz/~rmclachl/overthehill.html
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  Thanks so much for injecting facts into this, and changing my view a bit! My, now less certain views, were based on some article I read years ago where the peak ages for various fields were listed, and were quite further spread out. I especially remember that historians peak in their 60s! Like someone says in your article "This myth, if you wish to call it a myth, is so prevalent that it's quite probable that there's some truth to it", but I'm now far less certain and flippant about. Thanks again!
  - philwelch 7y ago
    > I especially remember that historians peak in their 60s! I bet when you're old enough that you can see firsthand how perceptions of the same events change over time, you get a hell of a lot better at recognizing that in history.
- philwelch 7y ago
  Many prominent mathematicians throughout history fit this pattern, but largely because they lived in different times. Mathematics builds on itself: 200-300 years ago, there was less mathematics to build on, so you could get to the frontiers a lot faster. Also, academic fields were less delineated--not only was Newton both a mathematician and a physicist at a time when the two weren't distinct fields and physics barely existed, but he also lived in a world where wasting the entire rest of his life studying Bible codes and nurturing personal feuds seemed like a reasonable idea. There are also confirmation and sample biases involved. Everyone hears about Terence Tao because Terence Tao's story is remarkable. All the 38-year-old mathematicians who are making those research contributions are normal, and hence their stories aren't interesting.