Mathematics - why?

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The video length is way beyond my attention span :) But: most other scientists and engineers would consider applied mathematics a servant rather the queen, and they could not care less for pure math, happily ignoring the fact that today's pure math is very likely to become applied / applicable tomorrow.
 
Bah! Since when is Math a Science? I've never heard of a Mathematician bent over for hours with their eye to a microscope, squirting little oil drops between two tiny metal plates, zapping them with x-rays, and playing with the voltage to make them hover in the air. It's called the "Millikan Oil Drop" experiment and it's Particle Physics hazing. Do that, and it'll make you a Scientist! (I'd say it will also grow hair on your chest but I don't think that my lab partner ever did. Not that I checked or anything. Really.)

-Dan
 
topsquark said:
Bah! Since when is Math a Science? I've never heard of a Mathematician bent over for hours with their eye to a microscope, squirting little oil drops between two tiny metal plates, zapping them with x-rays, and playing with the voltage to make them hover in the air. It's called the "Millikan Oil Drop" experiment and it's Particle Physics hazing. Do that, and it'll make you a Scientist! (I'd say it will also grow hair on your chest but I don't think that my lab partner ever did. Not that I checked or anything. Really.)

-Dan
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Of course today, we distinguish between mathematics and science, but I suspect that mathematics started as a science.
 
JeffM said:
Of course today, we distinguish between mathematics and science, but I suspect that mathematics started as a science.
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Oh, I'm joking around, of course. I don't really consider Mathematics to be a Science as (mostly) you can prove Mathematical results rather than just have to accept Scientific results based on experimental data. But I have the highest respect for it. I don't know about anything further back but by the time of the Greek Philosophers Math was as much a logical field of study as any of the Sciences. I suspect this was about the time period that Math "split off" from the rest of the Sciences because the Greeks did so love to categorize everything.

-Dan
 
@Subhotosh Khan, thanks, I enjoyed the show. I imagine that most of the helpers here will already know everything in there (look at me gettin' all smug ??), and yet it was fun, entertaining and very well put together with great visuals and speakers.
 
JeffM said:
I suspect that mathematics started as a science
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That's an intriguing statement, Jeff, but how are 'mathematics' and 'science' defined, in such a context?

Let the floodgates be opened …

;)
[imath]\;[/imath]
 
Otis said:
That's an intriguing statement, Jeff, but how are 'mathematics' and 'science' defined, in such a context?

Let the floodgates be opened …

;)
[imath]\;[/imath]
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I think mathematics started with (greed) desire - I want more (1,2,3,...infinity) of those........
 
topsquark said:
I don't really consider Mathematics to be a Science as (mostly) you can prove Mathematical results rather than just have to accept Scientific results based on experimental data.

-Dan
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Dan,
I seriously considered studying Physics. Then I day, when I was in Physics 1, I was reading Halliday and Resnick (that was the textbook we used) and it stated a major fact at the end of the page. I turned the page over to see the proof and it was not there. I asked my professor about this and he said that there was no proof. It has been accepted for years because of scientific results. Since that day I never considered being a Physics major again. I thoroughly enjoyed studying Physics (but not as much as math) and I have the upmost respect for Physicists--even more than Mathematicians.

It funny how I chose math because it had proofs and you went the other way.
 
This was the first math video where there was nothing that I didn't understand. I highly recommend this video.
 
Steven G said:
Dan,
I seriously considered studying Physics. Then I day, when I was in Physics 1, I was reading Halliday and Resnick (that was the textbook we used) and it stated a major fact at the end of the page. I turned the page over to see the proof and it was not there. I asked my professor about this and he said that there was no proof. It has been accepted for years because of scientific results. Since that day I never considered being a Physics major again. I thoroughly enjoyed studying Physics (but not as much as math) and I have the upmost respect for Physicists--even more than Mathematicians.

It funny how I chose math because it had proofs and you went the other way.
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Oh, don't get me wrong. I don't like Physics because you can only prove it experimentally. Frankly I think that's a big pain in the butt, especially considering how bad an experimentalist I am. I once measured the charge on the electron. I was 38 orders of magnitude off. My buddies said, "Aw you just got the sign wrong!" and checked my work. Nope. That's what the data said. The radius of the hydrogen atom was the size of the orbit of Jupiter.

I like Theory. You can prove stuff there. :)

-Dan
 
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