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A comment on Posterous: I went to etc., can I still work for you?. Parent comment

Re:Posterous: I went to etc., can I still work for you? by yters on Wednesday September 24, 2008 @03:32PM (#313951)
That's a good point, but the same occurs with programming. We generally can't catch every corner case. Of course, this is much more devastating in a mathematical proof, i.e. the proof is invalid. However, it is still very possible to develop good mathematical skills without a degree.

Also, this is somewhat unorthodox, but I've read that Godel proposed a new method of doing mathematics based on the experimental method, due to the implications of his incompleteness theorem. If that were the case, then math becomes more like computer science, or perhaps computer science is this new way of doing math.

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Re:Posterous: I went to etc., can I still work for you? by mark-t on Thursday September 25, 2008 @03:10AM (#314607)
> However, it is still very possible to develop good mathematical skills without a degree.

Absolutely. I don't think the degree is very useful for developing skills at all. I'm sure there are plenty who would disagree, but mathematics courses don't set a very high bar for how much you have to think about a topic. I learned more in the past month preparing for my algebra qual than I did during an entire year of an undergrad class at Northwestern (of course, I drew heavily on the basic knowledge I had).

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