Skip to main content
Mathematics

Return to Answer

arXiv.org is known as "arXiv" not "the arXiv" (eg see http://arxiv.org/help/general)
Source Link
psmears
psmears
  • 772
  • 5
  • 10

You can create new jobs for mathematicians, e.g. by funding institutes like Jim Simons. Arguably this does much more for mathematics than actually doing mathematics due to replaceability: the marginal effect of becoming a mathematician is that you do marginally better mathematics than the next best candidate for your job, which is a much smaller effect than creating a new mathematician job where there wasn't one before.

You can also work on tools for mathematicians to use like the arXiv (or MathOverflow!). Arguably this also does much more for mathematics than actually doing mathematics. Incidentally, the arXiv was developed by a physicist, Paul Ginsparg, and almost none of the mathematics graduate students I've talked to about this know his name.

You can create new jobs for mathematicians, e.g. by funding institutes like Jim Simons. Arguably this does much more for mathematics than actually doing mathematics due to replaceability: the marginal effect of becoming a mathematician is that you do marginally better mathematics than the next best candidate for your job, which is a much smaller effect than creating a new mathematician job where there wasn't one before.

You can also work on tools for mathematicians to use like the arXiv (or MathOverflow!). Arguably this also does much more for mathematics than actually doing mathematics. Incidentally, the arXiv was developed by a physicist, Paul Ginsparg, and almost none of the mathematics graduate students I've talked to about this know his name.

You can create new jobs for mathematicians, e.g. by funding institutes like Jim Simons. Arguably this does much more for mathematics than actually doing mathematics due to replaceability: the marginal effect of becoming a mathematician is that you do marginally better mathematics than the next best candidate for your job, which is a much smaller effect than creating a new mathematician job where there wasn't one before.

You can also work on tools for mathematicians to use like arXiv (or MathOverflow!). Arguably this also does much more for mathematics than actually doing mathematics. Incidentally, arXiv was developed by a physicist, Paul Ginsparg, and almost none of the mathematics graduate students I've talked to about this know his name.

Source Link
Qiaochu Yuan
Qiaochu Yuan
  • 431.9k
  • 53
  • 967
  • 1.4k

You can create new jobs for mathematicians, e.g. by funding institutes like Jim Simons. Arguably this does much more for mathematics than actually doing mathematics due to replaceability: the marginal effect of becoming a mathematician is that you do marginally better mathematics than the next best candidate for your job, which is a much smaller effect than creating a new mathematician job where there wasn't one before.

You can also work on tools for mathematicians to use like the arXiv (or MathOverflow!). Arguably this also does much more for mathematics than actually doing mathematics. Incidentally, the arXiv was developed by a physicist, Paul Ginsparg, and almost none of the mathematics graduate students I've talked to about this know his name.

Post Made Community Wiki by Qiaochu Yuan