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Who are the "knee-jerk literary math-haters" the article is aiming at? I'm not aware of any and I certainly don't think the public or the establishment, in gene

Who are the "knee-jerk literary math-haters" the article is aiming at? I'm not aware of any and I certainly don't think the public or the establishment, in general, "hate maths". There is a weird tribalism in this article.

greenbit 4y ago
There's a weird tribalism baked into academia, isn't there? Thankfully it's not of an adversarial nature, more like garden variety dichotomy. Terminology aside, it didn't seem that the article was trying to drive wedges, but in fact attempting to build bridges.
adastra22 4y ago
I think there is context you are lacking. This is an opinion piece within a British magazine. The UK prime minister, a member of the Conservative Party, has just proposed that the standard curriculum for high/secondary school extend the requirement to take math through age 18 / grade 12. Apparently right now it is only required that math be studied through age 16 / grade 10. Because this is a suggestion coming from the Tories, there has been in the last month or so a whole slew of opinion pieces ridiculing the suggestion that non-STEM students should be required to take maths past age 16. It's been called an elitist, out-of-touch policy change, requiring students to learn useless math they will never use, etc. etc. By and large these were all very politically-driven opinions. I can't help but think that the same people making these arguments might have been arguing the exact opposite--in favor of more maths education--if it had been their turn in power, or if the Conservative position was different. So yes, this opinion piece is rather tribal. But I think it is because he is responding to an intensely political issue and trying to talk some sense into people who are already forming opinions on a purely tribal basis.
mananaysiempre 4y ago
“Haters” might be too strong a word, but of ugh-ers there are plenty, and humanities education does not seem to help—neither with the ugh-ing, nor with the social approval of said ugh-ing. And that is substantially harmful up to and including societal scales[1]. Not that the ugh-ers are entirely at fault! In society where nobody actually teaches anything deserving to be called “maths”[2], certainly nothing that would give any clue as to why people would actually want to do this thing[3], there’s little they could do to do better. Except maybe, as adults, wonder why there is this strange cluster of people who appreciate this apparently repulsive thing and investigate the reason for themselves. (Not that this appreciation is universal even among experimental physicists, for example.) [1] https://twitter.com/TeaKayB/status/1596485647115554817 https://twitter.com/TeaKayB/status/1596485647115554817 [2] https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/devlin_03_08.html https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/devlin_03_08.htm... [3] https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.2810679 https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.2810679

greenbit 4y ago

There's a weird tribalism baked into academia, isn't there? Thankfully it's not of an adversarial nature, more like garden variety dichotomy. Terminology aside, it didn't seem that the article was trying to drive wedges, but in fact attempting to build bridges.

adastra22 4y ago

I think there is context you are lacking. This is an opinion piece within a British magazine. The UK prime minister, a member of the Conservative Party, has just proposed that the standard curriculum for high/secondary school extend the requirement to take math through age 18 / grade 12. Apparently right now it is only required that math be studied through age 16 / grade 10. Because this is a suggestion coming from the Tories, there has been in the last month or so a whole slew of opinion pieces ridiculing the suggestion that non-STEM students should be required to take maths past age 16. It's been called an elitist, out-of-touch policy change, requiring students to learn useless math they will never use, etc. etc. By and large these were all very politically-driven opinions. I can't help but think that the same people making these arguments might have been arguing the exact opposite--in favor of more maths education--if it had been their turn in power, or if the Conservative position was different. So yes, this opinion piece is rather tribal. But I think it is because he is responding to an intensely political issue and trying to talk some sense into people who are already forming opinions on a purely tribal basis.

mananaysiempre 4y ago

“Haters” might be too strong a word, but of ugh-ers there are plenty, and humanities education does not seem to help—neither with the ugh-ing, nor with the social approval of said ugh-ing. And that is substantially harmful up to and including societal scales[1]. Not that the ugh-ers are entirely at fault! In society where nobody actually teaches anything deserving to be called “maths”[2], certainly nothing that would give any clue as to why people would actually want to do this thing[3], there’s little they could do to do better. Except maybe, as adults, wonder why there is this strange cluster of people who appreciate this apparently repulsive thing and investigate the reason for themselves. (Not that this appreciation is universal even among experimental physicists, for example.) [1] https://twitter.com/TeaKayB/status/1596485647115554817 https://twitter.com/TeaKayB/status/1596485647115554817 [2] https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/devlin_03_08.html https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/devlin_03_08.htm... [3] https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.2810679 https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.2810679