Math and Science....

[steve-potocin.livejournal.com]

One of our education system's biggest problems is that there is not enough emphasis on the Maths and Sciences.....America is falling behind in the world because our students are not gaining the necessary knowledge in these fields....

Too much emphasis on useless book learnin and abstruse theories and nto enough on PRACTICAL skills....students shoudl learn about the greatness of the Capitalist system, why Marxism is evil and Socialism doesn't work, how to invest in the stock market, balance their finances...and so on....

Arts and Humanities programs should be defunded since many teachers in those fields only fill students minds with revisionist histories and make them hate their country.....in addition,the skills learned in those fields are not as important as those of MATH and SCIENCE,which are the wave of the future....

Most academics can't even fix a doorknob....and yet they want to advocate for socialism....most of the socialists who support Obama have never ran a business....never done payroll,none of it...

Comments

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

Hah.

Pure mathematics is among the least useful disciplines. Pure mathematics has no necessary relation to reality -- to anything except itself. It's nearly the definition of "book learning", or "abstruce theories".

Arts and humanities programs at least teach people how to communicate.

[x-eleven.livejournal.com]

That's not true. Mathematics certainly does have a necessary relation to reality since it is the product of reality. Being a product of reality, it may be used to model other aspects of reality. How accurate your results are depends on how accurate your methods are.

A good example of that is Quaternions (more precise) versus the Heaviside/Gibbs Simplification (less precise).

Q= a + jb + kc + ld -- Where:

a, b, c, and d are real numbers, and where:
j ≠ k ≠ l And

j² = k² = l² = jkl = -1

Or alternatively:

Q= (a, V)

Being that this is a four dimensional entity consisting of a scalar and a vector, the Quaternion more accurately models the reality of a four dimensional space/time. When applied to a practical problem, Maxwell's Equations:

Q_E= (0, E) Electric field
Q_B= (0, B) Magnetic field
Q_O= (∂/∂t, &nabla) Operator

Go through the calculations, and your results are pretty much what you'd expect:

∇ * B= 0 (No magnetic point "charges", for every "N" there must be an "S")
∇ * E= ρ (Electric charges exist)
&nabla X E= ∂B/∂t (Time varying magnetic fields give rise to electric fields)
∇ X B= J + ∂E/∂t (AC gives rise to magnetic fields)

The last one is interesting, in that it is often called Ampere's Circuital Law with Maxwell's Correction. It's that last term that Maxwell added without any mathematical justification because he realized that displacement (i.e. capacitive) currents must also contribute to the resulting magnetic field. Of course, Maxwell had to do many calculations for each direction in the 3-D coordinates, since vector math wasn't so highly developed in those days. You also won't get that result from the H-G Simplification either. However, it drops right out if you use Quaternions to attack the problem. There's no need to add a correction at all.

Rowan Hamilton understood this perfectly, however, the idgits of the mid-19^th century couldn't wrap their tiny little minds around the concept of a four dimensional space/time, and that's why you probably never heard of Quaternions. When Heaviside and Gibbs proposed their simplified vector algebra, everyone heaved a big sigh of relief now that they didn't have to worry about Hamilton's Quaternions and their implication for the nature of space and time.

Mathematical exercises that at first glance appear "abstruse" -- such as the proof of Fermat's last theorem -- lead to other proofs and methods that do have practical applications.

Please.

[futurebird.livejournal.com]

"and that's why you probably never heard of Quaternions"

EVERYONE has heard of them. And you didn't really explain how math helps people communicate. You showed that it has applications, and that's not the same thing.

My issue with quaternions is that they aren't a field. And we aren't going to find any fields beyond C. It's sort of sad--

Re: Please.

[x-eleven.livejournal.com]

"EVERYONE has heard of them".

I highly doubt that.

"And you didn't really explain how math helps people communicate".

Speaking of communication, it would appear that you need a lot of help in that area. Chipuni up there made a couple of nonsensical statements:

1. "Pure mathematics is among the least useful disciplines".


2. "Pure mathematics has no necessary relation to reality..."

I demonstrated that it wasn't so.

"And you didn't really explain how math helps people communicate".

I didn't do that because that was never my intention in the first place.

Re: Please.

[futurebird.livejournal.com]

I didn't take those first two points so literally-- and I doubt they were meant literally. *sigh*

I thought the most essential part of what was being said was that math doesn't help people to communicate like the humanities do. I think that's a valid and important point-- and a good refutation of the "math is everything" nonsense that started this thread.

Have some respect for the irrational and don't go whipping out your quaternions to intimidate people. You would have done better to have pointed out the error in the proof in that user icon...


I didn't do that because that was never my intention in the first place.

Then you were doing what mathematicians do far to often: playing with abstractions and technicalities in the corner while the main idea goes sailing past your big 'ol head.

Re: Please.

[mrsilence.livejournal.com]

math doesn't help people to communicate like the humanities do

Err...bullshit.

That's one of the things which mathematics absolutely does.

The difference between mathematics and the humanities is simply the manner and technical content of what is being communicated. You might not think mathematic information is as relevant to human society as say, history, but you'd be wrong.

[girlspell.livejournal.com]

I feel your pain. My brother is a Theoretical mathematician.

[futurebird.livejournal.com]

That's why I love math.