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It's like saying math is about numbers. Isn't it? I saw where you were going with the astronomy/telescopes analogy, but you lose me on the numbers bit.

parenthesis 18y ago
Math is about sets and relations and functions and logic, ..., and, yes, numbers. But many branches of math aren't particularly or specifically concerned with numbers (e.g. linear algebra, group theory, topology), and even those which seem to be (e.g. number theory or real analysis) can be thought of as about sets with particular properties (the mathematician's ideas of the integers and the real numbers are* just ideas of sets with particular properties). [* are == need only be. The mathematician is allowed to be a realist about numbers and think that there are the real numbers etc., and that these are what she is reasoning about.]
- yummyfajitas 18y ago
  Some people take that viewpoint. But in my view, math is about getting the right numbers, and you don't fully understand a problem until you can get the right numbers out. Here are two examples: 1) Theorem: det A != 0 implies Ax=b has a solution for a square matrix A. If you actually try this, you'll discover all sorts of matrices A for which the textbook method fails. Thinking carefully about how to find x in the presence of rounding errors leads you to discover condition numbers, numerical range and all that other interesting stuff. 2) Theorem (circa 1870): Fourier series work. (In particular, they converge pointwise.) Gibbs: I tried, it didn't work for discontinuous functions. I made some graphs, they are terrible. WTF! Eventually, people paid attention to Gibbs and discovered Gibbs ringing. Trying to figure this out led us to learn about uniform convergence, Hilbert spaces and all that. Of course, I'm a numerical analyst, so I might be a little biased.
d0mine 18y ago
Read A Mathematician’s Lament (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=256176 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=256176). It does a pretty good job (among other things) on explaining what the math is all about.
vecter 18y ago
parenthesis hit the nail on the head. If I was asked to give the most concise definition of mathematics I could, I would say it's the study of structure and relations.
gaius 18y ago
Maths is about numbers in the same way that literature is about letters.

parenthesis 18y ago

Math is about sets and relations and functions and logic, ..., and, yes, numbers. But many branches of math aren't particularly or specifically concerned with numbers (e.g. linear algebra, group theory, topology), and even those which seem to be (e.g. number theory or real analysis) can be thought of as about sets with particular properties (the mathematician's ideas of the integers and the real numbers are* just ideas of sets with particular properties). [* are == need only be. The mathematician is allowed to be a realist about numbers and think that there are the real numbers etc., and that these are what she is reasoning about.]

yummyfajitas 18y ago
Some people take that viewpoint. But in my view, math is about getting the right numbers, and you don't fully understand a problem until you can get the right numbers out. Here are two examples: 1) Theorem: det A != 0 implies Ax=b has a solution for a square matrix A. If you actually try this, you'll discover all sorts of matrices A for which the textbook method fails. Thinking carefully about how to find x in the presence of rounding errors leads you to discover condition numbers, numerical range and all that other interesting stuff. 2) Theorem (circa 1870): Fourier series work. (In particular, they converge pointwise.) Gibbs: I tried, it didn't work for discontinuous functions. I made some graphs, they are terrible. WTF! Eventually, people paid attention to Gibbs and discovered Gibbs ringing. Trying to figure this out led us to learn about uniform convergence, Hilbert spaces and all that. Of course, I'm a numerical analyst, so I might be a little biased.

d0mine 18y ago

Read A Mathematician’s Lament (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=256176 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=256176). It does a pretty good job (among other things) on explaining what the math is all about.

vecter 18y ago

parenthesis hit the nail on the head. If I was asked to give the most concise definition of mathematics I could, I would say it's the study of structure and relations.

gaius 18y ago

Maths is about numbers in the same way that literature is about letters.