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This quote: “That’s the real role of mathematics,” Touboul said. “To abstract things. To see what is really important.” Is concentrating on things like this rea

This quote: “That’s the real role of mathematics,” Touboul said. “To abstract things. To see what is really important.” Is concentrating on things like this really important?

m3rc 12y ago
Maybe not to you, or to someone coming from a pure math area, but to anyone who studies social changes/trends then yes, it would be
ObviousScience 12y ago
Yes? The point of applied mathematics is to understand if the same driving forces which cause clothing trends also govern other human behaviors, and to extract out these commonalities (or what is "really important" about the events) to study in the abstract, as a mechanism free of context, so we can enhance our ability to understand these situations (as well as other situations with similar behaviors) and make accurate predictions of the future. That's the very basis of applied mathematics. Nor should fashion be discounted as a trivial human endeavor: it acts in several capacities, from providing some safety from the elements to appealing to our sense of aesthetics to behaving as social signaling mechanism. Understanding how humans deal with the confluence of these competing forces is hardly a trivial area of research in to human behavior. I'm curious, what exactly you're intending with a clearly out of context quote, seemingly trying to slight the study of fashion with it.
tikhonj 12y ago
In this case, the whole "hipsters" angle was just a cute hook to make the paper more interesting. In reality, it's a neat model of many different dynamic system and a useful mathematical abstraction in and of itself. Even if we didn't have an immediate application now, it would be useful as math and clearly increase the "sum of human knowledge". It's impossible to predict exactly where this idea will lead in the future, whether interesting applications or more math, so it's worth working on just speculatively. Of course, in this case, it also has an immediate application in neuroscience, which is useful in a visceral sort of way that's easier to appreciate.
- barce 12y ago
  I totally agree. Replace "non-comformist" and "conformist" in this paper with "predator" and "prey," and you can speculate on some more interesting biological ideas.
bane 12y ago
Now use it to predict a trend: Bam, you're now in economics, you've just figured out what the next group of ten million people will be wearing and doing and you've employed tens of thousands of people to make that happen. That's a lot of families suddenly being fed and clothed so other people can exercise their compulsive need to belong to a group.
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protonfish 12y ago
That is not the role of math, it is the role of science. If he did actual science, he would also need to try and disprove his mathematical model with experiment. Since, it isn't science, he can skip that step and just publish his idea as truth.

This quote: “That’s the real role of mathematics,” Touboul said. “To abstract things. To see what is really important.” Is concentrating on things like this really important?

m3rc 12y ago

Maybe not to you, or to someone coming from a pure math area, but to anyone who studies social changes/trends then yes, it would be

ObviousScience 12y ago

Yes? The point of applied mathematics is to understand if the same driving forces which cause clothing trends also govern other human behaviors, and to extract out these commonalities (or what is "really important" about the events) to study in the abstract, as a mechanism free of context, so we can enhance our ability to understand these situations (as well as other situations with similar behaviors) and make accurate predictions of the future. That's the very basis of applied mathematics. Nor should fashion be discounted as a trivial human endeavor: it acts in several capacities, from providing some safety from the elements to appealing to our sense of aesthetics to behaving as social signaling mechanism. Understanding how humans deal with the confluence of these competing forces is hardly a trivial area of research in to human behavior. I'm curious, what exactly you're intending with a clearly out of context quote, seemingly trying to slight the study of fashion with it.

tikhonj 12y ago

In this case, the whole "hipsters" angle was just a cute hook to make the paper more interesting. In reality, it's a neat model of many different dynamic system and a useful mathematical abstraction in and of itself. Even if we didn't have an immediate application now, it would be useful as math and clearly increase the "sum of human knowledge". It's impossible to predict exactly where this idea will lead in the future, whether interesting applications or more math, so it's worth working on just speculatively. Of course, in this case, it also has an immediate application in neuroscience, which is useful in a visceral sort of way that's easier to appreciate.

barce 12y ago
I totally agree. Replace "non-comformist" and "conformist" in this paper with "predator" and "prey," and you can speculate on some more interesting biological ideas.

bane 12y ago

Now use it to predict a trend: Bam, you're now in economics, you've just figured out what the next group of ten million people will be wearing and doing and you've employed tens of thousands of people to make that happen. That's a lot of families suddenly being fed and clothed so other people can exercise their compulsive need to belong to a group.

deleted 12y ago

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protonfish 12y ago

That is not the role of math, it is the role of science. If he did actual science, he would also need to try and disprove his mathematical model with experiment. Since, it isn't science, he can skip that step and just publish his idea as truth.