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I am surprised by the usefulness of math concepts as analogies for everyday life. Local vs. global optima, explore vs. exploit, depth-first vs. breadth-first, c

by blt 7y ago

I am surprised by the usefulness of math concepts as analogies for everyday life. Local vs. global optima, explore vs. exploit, depth-first vs. breadth-first, constraints vs. objectives, necessary vs. sufficient, ... I also find myself wanting to compose precise statements using "for each", "there exists", "such that", and so on, in a recursive formal logic structure, when discussing non-mathematical topics. It's hard to tell if those analogies actually help you make real-life decisions, or if they are just a convenient way to state ideas that are also easily stated in non-mathematical language.

elevenoh 7y ago
Rigour & information density ftw.
hyperpallium 7y ago
THE UNREASONABLE EFFECTIVENESS OF MATHEMATICS, Hamming, https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/March02/Hamming/Hamming.html https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/March02/Hamming/Hamming.... The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences, Wigner, http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html wikipedia article https://wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_of_Mathematics_in_the_Natural_Sciences https://wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_of... I kind of think much of mathematics was constructed to solve problems, so it's not that surprising that it solves problems. On a deeper level, any optimal internally consistent system will probably be good at reasoning about any real phenomena with the same constraints. OTOH our mathematics probably reflects human reasoning styles (despite us not understanding but "just getting used to it"), and aliens might have explored different mathematics first (e.g. algebraic geometry might make us the aliens to Euclid).
c3534l 7y ago
Meh. Any reasonably broad subject can be analogized to cover any other. I'm more surprised by how versatile baseball analogies are, for instance, considering it's scope is significantly smaller than mathematics.

by blt 7y ago

elevenoh 7y ago

Rigour & information density ftw.

hyperpallium 7y ago

THE UNREASONABLE EFFECTIVENESS OF MATHEMATICS, Hamming, https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/March02/Hamming/Hamming.html https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/March02/Hamming/Hamming.... The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences, Wigner, http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html wikipedia article https://wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_of_Mathematics_in_the_Natural_Sciences https://wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_of... I kind of think much of mathematics was constructed to solve problems, so it's not that surprising that it solves problems. On a deeper level, any optimal internally consistent system will probably be good at reasoning about any real phenomena with the same constraints. OTOH our mathematics probably reflects human reasoning styles (despite us not understanding but "just getting used to it"), and aliens might have explored different mathematics first (e.g. algebraic geometry might make us the aliens to Euclid).

c3534l 7y ago

Meh. Any reasonably broad subject can be analogized to cover any other. I'm more surprised by how versatile baseball analogies are, for instance, considering it's scope is significantly smaller than mathematics.