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The article spends most of its words discussing the reality of math via Platonism vs empiricism while forgetting its own title "What is Math?" If going for a p
by cskinner 6y ago
The article spends most of its words discussing the reality of math via Platonism vs empiricism while forgetting its own title "What is Math?"
If going for a pithy answer, I like tha following quote by G. H. Hardy:
A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.
I think I originally saw this quote in "A Mathematician's Lament" [0] (also known by the author's name as "Lockhart's Lament"), which has a lot to say about modern math education.
[0] (PDF) https://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf https://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/devlin/Lockharts...