> Like mathematicians, theorists in Computer Science take the greatest pride in knowing and using the most sophisticated mathematics to solve problems. For exam

> Like mathematicians, theorists in Computer Science take the greatest pride in knowing and using the most sophisticated mathematics to solve problems. For example, theorists will light up when telling you that they have discovered how an obscure theorem from geometry can be used in the analysis of a computer algorithm. Theorists focus on mathematical analysis and the asymptotic behavior of computation; they take pride in the beauty of equations and don't worry about constants. Although they usually imply that their results are relevant to real computers, they secretly dream about impressing mathematicians. This is true about all fields that involve substantial amount of mathematics, e.g., physics and economics. In physics (and to a lesser extent, economics) you see a sort of "rift" between experimentalists and theorists very often, with both groups thinking that they are better than the other. Even among theoretical physicists, you tend to see this sort of petty rivalry: high-energy theorists thinking that they are better because they are after the fundamental laws of the universe, condensed matter (both hard and soft) theorists who feel that they are the better lot since their theories can be compared with experiments, hard-condensed matter theorists often look down upon soft-condensed matter theory as being a "classical" discipline invented to bring in more grant money, etc. While there's some truth to all these beliefs, rather than engage in this petty rivalry, it would actually do a lot more good if people just did honest work in their own fields.