One of the amazing things about mathematics is that you'd like to work in one branch and wind up working in another. E.g., who knew before Riemann that number t

One of the amazing things about mathematics is that you'd like to work in one branch and wind up working in another. E.g., who knew before Riemann that number theory would often wind up being an exercise in calculus of one complex variable? The example perhaps best known to non-mathematicians is that there were two formulations of quantum mechanics, namely in group theory and in partial differential equations, and they turned out to be pretty much the same thing. -------------------------------- Come to think of it, that's been a great lesson for me in business life. I come in supposedly to consult about one kind of problem, and really wind up addressing a different subject entirely.