Re:University of Tokyo Graduate School Entrance Exam – Mathe...
by umanwizard on Thursday March 16, 2017 @02:57PM
(#13887943)
> You cannot communicate using dense language and expect non-math people to relate or even care.
You seem to be misunderstanding mathematicians' goal. It is not to communicate with the general public. It's to communicate with other mathematicians.
You could argue that the culture of the field should change and should be focused on public exposition (although I'd disagree with you, as I don't think modern math is really interesting or important for more than a small subset of people). But regardless of the outcome of that separate argument, it's currently the case that in practice that is not the goal.
> if you want more rigor in society you should introduce more people to math rather than having them being put-off by some elitist attitude.
Again, "mathematician" is not the same job as "general public mathematics educator". Most professional mathematicians do not care about what you're talking about except in the same vague way everybody else cares about it.
This is a bit like asking me to write my code in such a way that people who don't know C++ could understand it. That might be nice but it isn't the primary goal and I'm not paid to put extra effort into it.
You seem to be misunderstanding mathematicians' goal. It is not to communicate with the general public. It's to communicate with other mathematicians.
You could argue that the culture of the field should change and should be focused on public exposition (although I'd disagree with you, as I don't think modern math is really interesting or important for more than a small subset of people). But regardless of the outcome of that separate argument, it's currently the case that in practice that is not the goal.
> if you want more rigor in society you should introduce more people to math rather than having them being put-off by some elitist attitude.
Again, "mathematician" is not the same job as "general public mathematics educator". Most professional mathematicians do not care about what you're talking about except in the same vague way everybody else cares about it.
This is a bit like asking me to write my code in such a way that people who don't know C++ could understand it. That might be nice but it isn't the primary goal and I'm not paid to put extra effort into it.