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How universal is this experience? I remember a math grad student friend who said "math is a young man's game". He compared it to cycling; nothing you do in you
by Jeff_Brown 5y ago
How universal is this experience?
I remember a math grad student friend who said "math is a young man's game". He compared it to cycling; nothing you do in your old age would compare to what you could do earlier.
In fact according to him math is worse than cycling, if I'm correct that cyclists peak in their early 40s. Contrast that to economics, which specifically offers the Clark Medal for the best work performed by someone under forty, because old-timers would otherwise snaffle up every prize.
- rwetv 5y agoI am not sure I understand the connection you're making between the cumulative and highly technical nature of math and the age of a mathlete.
- Jeff_Brown 5y agoThat's fair. I didn't relate that my friend went on to say that the reason math is a young man's game is that it's only the young who can read and memorize results fast enough, and keep enough of that information in their head at one time, to do important work at the frontiers of math. The brain has physical limits, just as the rest of the body does. I am revolted by that idea. And I'm certainly a better coder than I was in my thirties, and I was better then than I was in my twenties. (Not that I'm under the illusion that my work compares to PhD-level math.)
- JabavuAdams 5y agoPeople repeat that quote a lot, but I don't think there's much evidence for it. The main thing is people have kids, and kids take time. Boom 10 years gone from high-performance productive individual-contributor work. It was uncommon for people to go back to school at a later age, but maybe not anymore?