8 ms·
I'm not sure what you mean by that. The "stuff that fills textbook" is at least a century or two old. "Random arXiv preprints" are (usually) literally cutting-e
by uxp8u61q 3y ago
I'm not sure what you mean by that. The "stuff that fills textbook" is at least a century or two old. "Random arXiv preprints" are (usually) literally cutting-edge research.
- paulpauper 3y agoThat is literally my point restated. mathematicians who write textbooks are covering stuff which is old, not cutting edge. most arxiv posts are not cutting edge, only a tiny percentage are, like the stuff mentioned here.
- uxp8u61q 3y ago> most arxiv posts are not cutting edge That's absurd. I'm a math researcher. I follow a couple of arxiv categories. Almost everything on there is new theorems. That's the definition of cutting edge.
- lanstin 3y agoI wouldn't necessarily discount the value of the older maths; I'm taking analysis and abstract algebra as my first classes in a maths masters program; most everything is from the 1800s or early 1900s but is still mind blowingly cool and not necessarily well known on the street. Vitali sets, the Burnside lemma, group actions, all quite fun. And this is before even treating a function space as a vector space or Galois theory.