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>Most work in pure mathematics -- even outstandingly brilliant work done by outstandingly brilliant people -- is never useful outside pure mathematics. Perhaps
by pervycreeper 12y ago
>Most work in pure mathematics -- even outstandingly brilliant work done by outstandingly brilliant people -- is never useful outside pure mathematics.
Perhaps this is untrue on a timescale of decades or centuries.
- gcr 12y agoApplications mine from pure math all the time. See this SO answer for a wide range of other fields' problems that were solved with pure math. I see things from cryptography, graphics, distributed computing, chemistry, ... http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/280530/can-you-provide-me-historical-examples-of-pure-mathematics-becoming-useful http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/280530/can-you-provi... The list is expansive if you care to look for it.
- gjm11 12y agoIt's definitely true that there's a large quantity of pure mathematics that later turns out to be useful outside pure mathematics. The question that's relevant here, though, is what fraction of pure mathematics is ever useful outside pure mathematics. I think this would be difficult to measure. My guess: only a small fraction, but some of that turns out to be incredibly useful.
- gcr 12y agoIt's hard for me to understand the ratio of the relative body of work that turns out to be useful versus the relative body of work that hasn't seen application yet. Across all institutions, pure mathematics is an extremely small field; yet their papers have an (almost) infinite amount of time available to find an application.