Timeline for Besides proving new theorems, how can a person contribute to mathematics?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
8 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 24, 2015 at 9:37 | comment | added | Matt | @Qiaochu: Yes, I was assuming that as N goes high, the output goes to zero before we run out of math jobs. For example, there are many more math jobs in higher education than there are publishing mathematicians. But even if you don't agree with me, you also don't agree with the formula in your answer, which referenced the next best candidate for your job, not the worst hired mathematician. And you should point out that by this same reasoning, creating a new job would only add the Nth best mathematician to the overall pool. (I like many arguments for math jobs, but not ones with math mistakes!) | |
| Jan 4, 2015 at 15:44 | comment | added | k.stm | @QiaochuYuan Did you mean to write “$N^{th}$ best mathematician” (as all of the remaining $N-1$ mathematician jobs would be filled by the next $N-1$ best mathematicians)? Even with that, I don’t follow your argument. (It doesn’t matter much, though, because I would have agreed with your assertion anyway.) | |
| Jan 4, 2015 at 12:01 | comment | added | John Kemeny | It sounds to me like the first part of the answer is "yes, you can pay others to prove theorems", which isn't really a satisfying answer. | |
| Jan 2, 2015 at 21:25 | comment | added | Qiaochu Yuan | @Matt: I don't agree. Let's say that there are a fixed number $N$ of mathematician jobs in the world, and that after you get one of them, the otherwise $N^{th}$ worst mathematician has to take a job outside of mathematics to which they're less well-suited. The marginal effect of doing this on mathematics is (the math you do) - (the math the $N^{th}$ worst mathematician would have done), plus other terms all involving jobs outside of mathematics (and presumably these are small by default). | |
| Jan 2, 2015 at 20:39 | comment | added | Matt | The "marginal effect" is much greater than you state, as you are considering only the first term of the series. The next term comes from the job that does get done by that next best candidate, which would otherwise have to be done by the next-next-best candidate, and so on. The series telescopes to the intuitive value: Your "marginal" contribution is indeed the total amount of math that you contribute. | |
| Jan 2, 2015 at 13:18 | history | edited | psmears | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
arXiv.org is known as "arXiv" not "the arXiv" (eg see http://arxiv.org/help/general)
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| S Jan 2, 2015 at 11:09 | history | answered | Qiaochu Yuan | CC BY-SA 3.0 | |
| S Jan 2, 2015 at 11:09 | history | made wiki | Post Made Community Wiki by Qiaochu Yuan |